


Coming Home

by KasmiKassim



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: Coming of Age, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Growing Up, M/M, Senpai-Kouhai Relationship, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-30
Updated: 2018-12-02
Packaged: 2019-04-30 01:39:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 23,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14486013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KasmiKassim/pseuds/KasmiKassim
Summary: Settling into Seniors isn’t hard for a champion like Shoma. What’s hard is watching people around him fall away, choosing what to let go, and learning to navigate life around inexplicable jackasses, like his childhood hero Yuzuru Hanyu.The latter is a slightly bigger problem than others.





	1. Groupies

**Author's Note:**

> I'll write a quick piece of fluff, she said. Just as a warm-up to my big Yuzuvier fic, she said. I won't get invested since I've only known these boys for two months, she said.
> 
> Standard disclaimer: this story is loosely inspired by facts involving real people's public representation that have been warped in the views of, well, viewers. No erotica in this one, sorry.
> 
> Comments and feedback are greatly appreciated!

**Chapter 1: Groupies**

,

“Straighten your back,” Yuzu says.

Shoma looks up from unlacing his boots, and quickly looks down again. “Yes, senpai.”

“Don’t hunch like that. It will get into your skating form and you’ll just look ugly. Stay professional at all times.”

Shoma straightens his back, careful to keep his eyes down. He sees Yuzu’s shoes disappear, and hunches again. He straightens in panic when a whack comes from behind. It’s Kanako.

“Hey, what’s with the rolly polly pose? Does your stomach hurt from all the milk tea?”

He scowls at her. “I didn’t have any yet!”

“Yet!” she sings, twirling away with her bag tucked under her arm. Shoma hunches down to finish unlacing his boots.

Shoma likes ice shows. It means he’s old enough, good enough, to be invited to skate with the best of the best. He’s not a fan of being around people all the time, but he knows that they mean well when they pull at his cheeks and tease him for being tiny. Even when they’re picking on him, everyone is kind in their own way.

Except Yuzu.

He yanks his bag over his shoulder and leaves the rink. At least practice is over for the afternoon. Hopefully he can get himself something sweet to drink and spend an idle afternoon before Kanako ropes him into another party full of older people that laugh at his expense. Not that he minds, but. Yuzu might be there.

He sneaks away from the bus before anyone can catch him.

,

,

The sun is moving too fast. Shoma stretches to chase it.

The booth is plush and dark, and he only has to tilt his head to get a view of the outside through the window. He chews on the straw of his drink while people pass by in groups. Kanako’s group walks by, and he shrinks back. He likes hanging out with her privately, but has nothing interesting to say to such a huge group of people. Except maybe entertaining them by providing cheeks to pinch.

A lull passes in the streets, so he stretches out again in the sun. His phone vibrates.

> Hey where are you

> We’re going for boba, wanna come

It’s Kanako. He takes a loud slurp of his drink.

< I’m tired, thanks

> Are you in your room

< No I’m hiding from you, old lady

> I’m gonna kick yer ass tonight

< Cool, I’ll keep hiding then

He puts the phone down, pleased with himself. See, he can be friendly. Just not…social. With a lot of people. At once.

Maybe he should have let Kanako know where he was. She worries for him. He had fumbled during practice, and she had assumed that he was nervous about being new to the senior circuit. Which is half true. His stomach turns at the memory of Yuzu’s eyes chasing him across the rink. Every time he turns around, he’s there, watching. Shoma resents how guilty and small Yuzu makes him feel when he gives that look.

The look that he’s giving right now, through the glass.

Yuzu’s friends are chatting and looking into their phones, waiting for the street light to turn. But Yuzu is in another world entirely, black eyes zoning in to pin Shoma breathless.

Then those eyes are turning away, curving easily into laughter, as he points at something across the street and leads the group away. Shoma breathes in relief, and his stomach turns with disappointment.

Of course he wouldn’t want to invite Shoma to come with them. Yuzu is a Senior, a champion. He doesn’t need to be pity-inviting little Shoma into his outings. It’s fine. It’s not like he wanted to be invited anyway.

He slurps loudly on his drink, and yelps when his teeth break through the straw. Spitting out shards of plastic, he runs a tongue over the roof of his mouth, and dives headfirst into the cup. It’s fine. He can drink his sweet milk tea in peace.

,

,

Things change when the foreigners arrive.

Shoma knows that technically he shouldn’t call them that; it’s outdated, but it’s just that everyone does it and the only people that frown about it are the cosmopolitan types like Yuzu and…well. Yuzu. His disapproval is worth a whole rink’s worth of disapprovals, so.

“Then what do we call them?” Nobu had said in exasperation. “White people? What if we get that one black skater from France?”

Yuzu had laughed, as he does at everything – well, everything except Shoma – and said: “overseas friends!”

“Too long,” Nobu had whined, earning a whack on his arm.

“It’s not as long as it would be in English,” Yuzu had chastised, and who would have thought Yuzu would be … considerate, in things like this. Or at all.

But that’s not completely fair, because Shoma knows that Yuzu can be considerate. He’d seen Yuzu pick up garbage that Sota had missed by a mile during one of their goof-off sessions. Sota had fumbled and bowed and turned blazing pink from it and Yuzu patted his head and walked away, nothing if not a gentle senior to Sota. And to Satoko too – well, okay, he isn’t exactly gentle on her, but he teases her only to make her at ease with him. He doesn’t bow to his seniors, and doesn’t expect his juniors to bow to him. He is… surprisingly democratic in his own way. Except to Shoma.

It gets easier, though, when the overseas folks are here, because his attention is diverted to them. Yuzu is fiercely attached to the older ones; he sits on Stephane’s lap, squeezes Johnny breathless, and attempts to pick up Jeff before nearly throwing out his back. He even goes twirling in between the pairs skaters while the male skaters strike damsel-like poses in his embrace.

“Javiiiii!!!”

“Yuzuuuu!!!”

Then there is that.

People make groaning noises as Yuzu and Javi throw themselves into each other’s arms. It seems that Javi is the only one that Yuzu plays the damsel role for, because he lets Javi toss him around with a laugh. And Shoma did not notice this. He definitely has not been observing Yuzu. He hasn’t.

“Oh, they did it, all right,” Nobu mutters.

Miki swiftly whacks Nobu on the back of the head. “Kids are listening!” she snaps in a low whisper. Shoma looks around and sees Wakaba. He nods in agreement.

Nobu whines. “Shoma’s legal age! In some parts of the world.”

“We do not need his virgin ears dirtied by your trash talk,” Miki hisses, and…Shoma has no idea what to say to that. He moves decidedly away from everyone, staying out of the path Yuzu and Javi have chosen to skate around in a pairs hold, and starts to practice his spins. He has a lot to work on, and he’s determined to capitalize on this chance to not have those judging eyes stuck to the back of his head.

Apparently this is too much to ask for, because when Shoma stops for a break, he sees Yuzu watching from afar. Javi is only a step away, watching Yuzu watch him, and when Shoma catches them, Yuzu looks away, Javi says something with a laugh, and Yuzu punches his arm.

Shoma looks down. He doesn’t need to see this. This does not concern him.

He takes a swig of water, catches his breath, and gets ready to retry the spin. Wakaba skates by, whistling a little. “Your hair’s cute,” she says, a phone camera pointed at him.

He quickly pats his hair flat. Everyone is weird today.

He’s about to start again when a gentle hand grasps his arm. He turns, and there is Javi, smiling like the sun. Shoma brightens. “Javi!”

He is content to bow, or even shake hands, but Javi will have nothing less than a full-body hug, like he does with Yuzu. Buried in a muscular chest, Shoma wonders what it’s like to hug Yuzu. Prickly, probably.

“How are you?” Javi enunciates slowly, and Shoma nods.

“I’m fine, thank you, and you?”

He and Javi stare at each other. They burst into laughter.

“Shoma, my man,” Javi says, clapping his shoulder, “you need to get off your textbook sentences.”

Shoma grins wider. “I’m fine, thank you, and you?”

Javi grabs him around the neck in a chokehold. Shoma squeals as Javi musses his hair, and Wakaba circles them with her camera phone. “Don’t upload that!” Shoma calls, flailing in Javi’s grip, and Wakaba runs away with a tongue sticking out in his direction.

Javi eventually lets go, giving him a little shake, and skates away to where Yuzu is watching with a blank face. Shoma sees it, feels his smile disappear like a burn, and hurries after Wakaba.

He had heard Yuzu passionately advocate for expanded English training in Japan while being succinctly informed by Kanako that he himself sucked. But he had a point. “We’re too complacent,” he had said. “Just because our own country is great to live in, we never try to go anywhere outside of it, or even learn other languages. We need to change that, have an eye out toward the world.” He had gotten surprised remarks from Nobu and Mao, because everyone knew what a diehard patriot he was. Which means…. Shoma isn’t actually sure what that means.

But when he finally catches Wakaba and demands that she show him the pictures, he gets a niggling sense of understanding. In the pictures, he and Javi laugh with joy bursting from their skin, and Yuzu watches from behind with his eyes darkened with something like…grief.

…but what does Shoma know.

He doesn’t need to understand English to know that Javi had spoken words of kindness. It’s something he gives freely and readily. He also doesn’t need to understand what’s going on between Yuzu and Javi to think that maybe, Yuzu might be an advocate of learning about the outside world because he has seen a different world out there. Maybe, since leaving, Yuzu became fierce and terrible because something had changed him.

He asks Wakaba to send him the pictures, and tries not to think about Yuzu’s laughing eyes and soft smiles. It was a long time ago.

,

,

Choreo steps are hell.

Shoma sweats through the whole thing because he can’t figure out which direction they’re going. Johnny laughs in good humor behind him, and he’s grateful for it, but this is their fourth try because Shoma can’t seem to get it right. He wonders at what point he can call for a break and ask to do a private runthrough so the others can rest. But it would be rude to call out in the middle of the steps, so he pushes through it, and immediately skates off when the music stops.

When he gets to Jeff, flailing his arms to be understood, Stephane materializes by his side. Jeff nods at them, and the other skaters scatter. Stephane holds out his hands, Shoma blinks at them, and Stephane laughingly pulls him into his chest – and then flings him out to the side, and pulls him back again. Shoma feels like a betrayed yo-yo.

“Alone, with me!” Stephane laughs.

Shoma eyes the rest of the group, who are flopping onto the surface of their choice to take a breather. He wonders where Stephane gets the energy. Shoma’s muscles are about to go on strike.

But he dutifully performs the steps with Stephane, over and over, until they start to look somewhat presentable. Sweat is raining down from him onto the ice and he could water a whole field by now if there was grass. Stephane finally lets go, and Shoma bends over to gasp for breath while Stephane skates away.

Then a new pair of skates appear in his sight, and it’s Javi and his warm hand, grasping Shoma around the waist, and this is better than a yo-yo because now he’s a lady in an escort as Javi warms him down with slow twirls. He laughs and clings to his arm, and wow, this is a muscular arm. He squeezes in awe, and Javi makes a hulklike grunt and flexes. Catcalls fill the rink. Shoma grows red, but Javi is having none of it, because he bends him backwards with a flourish. Shoma laughingly arches his back and lifts his foot for good measure. Catcalls intensify, and Mr. Plushenko claps.

“Don’t upload it!” Shoma grits through his teeth. He can hear Wakaba’s shutters.

When he’s done warming down, he can’t move his legs, and Javi wraps Shoma’s fingers around his middle and skates forward, letting Shoma dangle like a sled on a dog. He deposits Shoma safely on a bench and skates back out to join Yuzu, who is watching with crossed arms. Johnny shouts out a comment, and Yuzu shouts something back, and Javi almost falls down laughing.

Shoma decides to focus on his Japanese colleagues. The ones not including Yuzu. “A boba to delete whatever picture you took,” he offers Wakaba, trying to ignore the sound of Yuzu’s laughter as Javi circles him on the ice.

,

,

Shoma squints at the rota. He’s got the early morning slot. Whoever planned this hates him.

At least Yuzu’s not in his slot. It’s a major one, as blessings go. He throws himself onto bed, only to be roused by a knock on the door. Javi is grinning at him with a duffel bag and a wheeled carry-on. Shoma decides that whoever assigned rooms must be the same person that assigned ice slots.

Javi speaks a few words to Shoma’s blank smile, then he holds up a finger and dials his phone. Shoma has barely begun to panic when Yuzu shows up like lightning and is frowning down at him. It’s predictable, really, but it still twists something inside Shoma’s gut. He bobs his head, keeps his gaze downward.

Yuzu exchanges rapid-fire English with Javi, and Javi disappears with all his luggage down the hallway. Shoma looks up with dread.

“Javi wasn’t sure he could share a room with a language barrier, and he didn’t want to make you uncomfortable in any way.” Yuzu is looking at him with a smoothly blank face. “He’s going to take my room.”

Shoma wants to faint. He’s going to be rooming with Yuzu. Who can’t look at him without saying something snappy and hurtful. Who looks at him like he is finding a new way to give him negative GOEs for every aspect of his life.

“It’s not…very clean,” Shoma says faintly.

“Then make it clean.”

Shoma bows. “Yes, senpai.” He watches Yuzu’s feet shuffle away, and leans against his door.

But he gets up bolt quick, because if he wants to avoid any of those judging looks, he has no time to waste. He runs back into his room to start picking clothes and candy wrappers off the floor. This is going to be a long week.

,

,

**To Be Continued**


	2. Shizuoka

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your kudos and comments! I live for feedback! (Wink Nudge)

**Chapter 2: Shizuoka**

Yuzu goes out of his way to avoid Shoma, it seems.

The room is vacant by the time Shoma returns from morning practice. Yuzu occasionally turns up in sightseeing groups among older skaters, and is there for evening rehearsal, but then he disappears again and materializes only as a lump on the bed the next morning, unmoving while Shoma tiptoes around getting ready for his ice time. Shoma doesn’t know how to fix it.

The helplessness eats at him, vibrating against his nerves. Unlike competitions, this tension is a constant thing, a tunnel with no light at the end. His body is stiff with it, and he doesn’t know how to fix that either. It would be nice to have a warm embrace to collapse into, but Kanako is gone; she won’t be rejoining until later in the tour.

So he spends as much time skating as he can, burning away the nerves. The afternoon skaters tend to leave early, so he waits until they’re gone and throws himself into an axel. His muscles ache from morning practice, but whatever.

He falls.

He scrambles up, starts another crossover. Fresh pain radiates from his knee, but he’s used to working against his body. It might cripple him in time, but he’s already seventeen, and Yuzu was in Seniors by fifteen. And in this age of quads, not keeping up means giving up figure skating. And giving up, more than losing, is a bitter feeling. He jumps again.

“Smash the wall!” Yuzu had shouted once. “Imagine flying into a wall and smashing it!”

He was watching Shoma during his private ice time, and when Shoma noticed, he fell flat on his face. Yuzu skated into the ice, dark eyes stormy with something Shoma couldn’t understand.

“Are you going to do this until you die? Reinforcing bad habits?” He came up to Shoma, hands on hips. “Show me your axel.”

“I can’t,” Shoma said helplessly. “I’ve been trying for years.” And he was black and blue to prove it.

At that, Yuzu’s dark gaze swept Shoma up and down. “Well, that ends today.”

By the end of the session, Yuzu was blue in the lips from shouting while skating and Shoma had new bruises to match, with three clean triple axels under his belt.

Yuzu threw a towel at Shoma. “Better work on that too,” he said, watching Shoma catch it with his face.

“What?”

“Once you get famous, people throw shit. People get hit. Learn to catch.”

“…what?”

Yuzu was no longer looking at him. “Fame means losing power. Grow up. Grow strong. Don’t lose the power to protect those you love.”

Somehow Shoma felt that this wasn’t about catching bouquets for coach Mihoko, but by the time he thought to ask, Yuzu was gone. The next day he turned up in Sendai, all smiles and childlike waving, telling the press that he had just arrived in Japan.

Shoma never told anyone about that day in Nagoya. He went on to break records instead, roaring his way through the Junior circuit before landing triumphantly in Seniors.

,

,

Opening night is a bit of a disaster.

“Did you practice solo after rehearsal?” Miki asks suspiciously when she catches him crumbling onto a bench.

“I wanted to go over choreo,” Shoma pants.

“Shoma.”

“I’m fine.”

Miki frowns at him, moves away. He tries to gulp air into his lungs. A warm arm wraps around him from behind.

“You rest,” Javi says loudly over the music. “No quad.”

Shoma pulls away. “No-”

“Yes.” Javi plunks him down and skates out to the roaring arena. He’s joined by Yuzu, who should be the one resting. He just finished an encore program. Shoma was supposed to entertain the audience between him and Wakaba.

But now Yuzu is back out there with Javi, who isn’t even scheduled to be out there at all, and together they’re doing quad battles on what must be screaming leg muscles. Shoma feels impossibly young.

The next day, he doesn’t practice alone after rehearsal. He fumbles during choreo, blushes from it, but the skaters around him laugh and pull him along. During his jumping pass, he lands a quad toeloop, and returns backstage to be lifted into the air by at least five hands, and at least as many cheers. He comes down feeling high, wobbles on his feet, and Yuzu’s hand is catching him steady. Shoma reaches for it without thinking, and Yuzu grabs it for a tight moment – and then lets go.

Maybe this isn’t so bad. Maybe he’ll get used to this.

Or maybe not, because when they leave Chiba, Wakaba leaves. After giving her a hug that she describes as bland and boring, he feels indescribably lonely.

The room assignments remain unchanged. But somehow Yuzu’s ice time has changed, and Shoma finds out the hard way when he sneaks into the afternoon slot just in time to see Yuzu launch into a soaring triple axel. Entranced, Shoma sticks to the wall and cranes his neck until Javi laughs and Yuzu turns with such pure surprise that Shoma forgets to breathe.

“Didn’t you have practice already?” Yuzu comes near, breathing hard.

Shoma nods.

Yuzu frowns at him. “Conditioning, remember.”

Shoma feels unsteady. It’s as if his nerves have worn thin, snapped like ice beneath his feet. “I’m sorry,” he blurts.

Yuzu is silent.

“I’m sorry.” Shoma bows so Yuzu won’t have to see what his face is doing. Ugly things, probably. “In Chiba. I’m sorry you had to cover for me. And Javi too.” He turns to where Javi is leaning against the wall, and convulsively bows. Javi puts a hand on his heart and bows like an elf. Mr. Plushenko claps.

Yuzu’s skates shift. “It’s fine.” He sounds dismissive, almost annoyed. “Your body doesn’t belong only to you, is all.”

Of course. The audience is paying good money to see this. Shoma nods. This is fine. Yuzu isn’t trying to pick on him. He’s not.

It’s still awkward to share a room while conscious.

“Shower first,” Yuzu orders, wiping his face with his shirt. Shoma hurries in.

“I’m done,” he calls when he hurries out, and Yuzu whirls around and immediately looks away.

“Go dry yourself off properly, you’re creating a safety hazard.”

Shoma hurries back into the bathroom to wipe himself down with the flimsy towel around his waist. By the time he tiptoes back out, the wooden floor is wiped dry. Shoma’s face burns.

He crawls into bed and pretends to sleep while Yuzu showers and silently moves about the room getting dressed. He gets up only after Yuzu leaves, and decides that this is a good plan to stick to. It gets easier in time; Yuzu avoids him, Shoma hides, and wiggles out of group dinners. Yuzu barely acknowledges him during the extra afternoon slot, so it works out.

Shizuoka isn’t bad, all things considered. One morning Shoma even wakes to a gentle voice at his ear, fuzzy enough that it would make a nice stuffing in his little blanket cocoon. He flails at it, but it goes away, so he cracks an eye open to see where it went. Before him sits an ethereal jelly shaped like a person.

“Wake up,” the jelly says.

Shoma smiles at it sleepily.

The jelly hesitates. “You’re late for practice.”

Oh.

Shoma jumps out of bed, smacks his knee against the bedside table, and tumbles down. The jelly slides off and reappears as Yuzu with a sunlit halo. He peels off Shoma’s white-knuckled fingers and peers at his knee, and staring into a cascade of hair feels like a page out of a forgotten storybook. Yuzu is so close, so alert and bright, and Shoma feels unprepared for this, like a caterpillar exposed to sunlight before its time. Yet he wants to get even closer, maybe burrow under Yuzu’s skin and find the part of him that he remembers from long ago. Bring it back with him to his little cocoon, and keep it safe.

Then Yuzu looks up, and the moment is gone.

“Hey.” He hesitates. “Do you want to change rooms?”

Shoma blinks.

Yuzu looks down at Shoma’s knee again. “Javi is in a single bedroom, and I thought – you might want to take that one? And Javi and I can share this one.”

Oh.

Right.

Of course Yuzu would want to be with Javi. Disappointment rises in his throat, and he pushes it down. It’s too early in the morning for feeligs. “Yes, of course.”

Yuzu stays. He’s still close, and it’s too much. Shoma tears his gaze away, lets his eyes wander around the room, and see the clock.

“Ahh!” He’s late.

“I’ll take your slot. You take mine in the afternoon.” Yuzu stands. He’s washed and dressed already. Shoma’s gut drops.

“Sorry,” he whispers. He pulls his shoulders inward, becoming as small as he feels. “I’m sorry, senpai.”

He can’t see Yuzu, but he hears Yuzu finally move. “Sleep, Shoma.”

It sounds soft. Like defeat.

Shoma lies in bed long after Yuzu is gone, wondering which is worse: Yuzu barking at him to be better, or quietly taking up the burdens that Shoma is too much of a failure to handle. He tells himself not to cry, but it doesn’t work.

He doesn’t end up sleeping at all.

,

,

Nobu hits him in the arm.

“Ow!”

“What’s the sad face for?” Nobu slings an arm over Shoma’s shoulder like a giant octopus. “Got rejected by a girl?”

“What? No.”

“A boy, then?”

“Nobu…”

“I want romance!” Nobu wails. “Give me vicarious romance!”

“Oh god, Nobu’s at it again,” Miki says, passing by.

Nobu grins. “Oh, hey! Wanna see a picture?” By this he means whether Shoma wants to see two hundred pictures. Shoma resigns himself to nodding at baby pictures through his break when Yuzu snatches the phone out of Nobu’s hand.

“No phones. We’re performing.”

“But Shoma is sad!” Nobu whines. “He needs love.”

“No one needs that kind of love.” Yuzu slips the phone into his own pocket. “Also, Shoma needs to go over something with me.”

“Ooh, what is it?” Nobu perks up. “I wanna know!”

Shoma doesn’t.

He ends up at the other end of the rink, where Yuzu faces him and abruptly drops to a knee. Shoma panics and follows, but Yuzu pins him with a look, so he ends up hovering in an awkward half-crouch. He hopes there aren’t cameras around because “Noob Junior Looks Down at Legendary Senpai” is not a headline that will help his life. Why does Yuzu do this to him.

Then Yuzu pokes him firmly in the knee. Shoma crumples to the floor.

“You didn’t ice it, did you.”

“It’s just a bump,” Shoma moans.

Yuzu stands, hands on hips, and Shoma suddenly sees sweat glistening under strobe lights. He convulsively grabs his leg. “I can skate,” he says, and Yuzu blinks down at him. Shoma pulls away, voice crawling back into his throat. “I can skate.”

Yuzu’s eyes turn purple under the lights. “Show me an axel.”

Shoma looks around. “Here?”

Yuzu nods, eyes now red and green. Shoma draws himself up and bends his knees.

One. Two.

The knee flares with pain, but he lands. Yuzu’s eyes flicker blue.

“Ice it,” he turns away, “as much as you can.”

Shoma runs to the freezer.

,

,

**To Be Continued**


	3. Yokohama

**Chapter 3: Yokohama**

 

They don’t end up trading rooms, because Sota joins the tour at Yokohama. Shoma throws himself into his new roommate’s arms.

“You’re still short!” Sota laughs, and Shoma draws back to glare. Sota coos. “You’re always a giant in my eyes, senpai.”

“Shut up.”

“Junior Champion!”

“Shut uuuup.”

“Wanna go sightseeing?”

“Yes!”

Shoma doesn’t enjoy sightseeing on a good day, but seeing Sota is like a breath of salt air hitting him full in the face at the quiet little beach near the docks: familiar to the point of provocative. Something like a home he had left behind long ago, buried in his memory for fear of feelings that swell up too high and threaten to wash him away.

“Whatcha thinking?” Wakaba hits him in the arm.

Satoko pulls him by the other arm. “Come on, Shoma, let’s swim!”

“Go ahead.” He tugs himself out of her death grip, thankful that the rest of the girls haven’t arrived yet. As is, he’s still too strong for them to bodily carry into the water.

Sota turns out to be a traitor.

“Nooo,” he protests as they push him toward the waves. “I can’t swim, you guys, I’m gonna die.”

“Don’t lie. I’ve seen you in a swimming pool!” Wakaba cackles. “I have pictures.”

Of course she does.

“Let me take off my shoes at least,” he begs at the water’s edge, and when they let up, he runs.

He…is not a sprinter, it turns out.

The four of them end up tangled in the sand, bidding farewell to dignity, until the girls eventually run into the waters. Shoma lounges behind, obediently raising his legs as Sota dusts him off. “What would you do without me,” Sota sighs.

“Die of sand in my clothes, I suppose.”

“You’re so pathetic, senpai.”

“Call me that again and I’ll suplex you into the sand.”

Sota makes a show of shivering. “Stop threatening me with the power of your thighs, dude, seeing your cantilevers is scary enough.”

Shoma snickers.

The girls return to drag the boys into the water, but Shoma expresses his refusal with a full-bodied passion, so Wakaba ends up dragging Sota away while Satoko takes his place. “Anything change since I last saw you?”

“No?”

“No new love interest?” she sounds mildly disappointed.

“I…never had one?”

“That boy from the gym? Asked you to meet him by the locker three times so he could confess to you?” She clucks her tongue. “You forgot to show up each time?”

Oh.

“You even forgot that that happened, didn’t you.”

He buries his feet into the sand. “I forget a lot of things.”

The seagulls cry above, and it feels like a familiar call. He feels lulled to a memory he can’t grasp, like something buried beneath the sea. Bobbling just beneath the surface, never within reach.

People accuse him of not caring because he forgets. But carrying all the memories around can be exhausting. Especially when thrown into sharp relief against the here and now, darkened eyes that look nothing like what he remembers. It might be easier to fend off the disappointment with anger, but he can’t fault anyone for the fact that time goes by, the world goes around, and things change. People change.

He just wishes he knew what he had done to make Yuzu change.

“Don’t look so sad,” Satoko says quietly. “You can still change.” Her eyes grow positively devilish. “Your height, for example.”

“I hate to break it to you,” Shoma deadpans, “but I’ve passed puberty.”

“Aw, don’t lose hope.” She grins. “You might grow yet!”

He bares his teeth at her. She laughs.

“Hey.” She stops. “Isn’t that Yuzu senpai?”

Shoma turns whip quick.

It is. He’s employing a lanky, slouchy stance, a look he rarely employs for fear of the random paparazzo. His head is bowed, and he’s clinging to a man whose back is turned toward them.

“Is that Dai?” Shoma squints. Dai isn’t scheduled to join them until later in the tour. “It looks like he’s crying,” he says as Satoko says, “they’re on a date!”

They look at each other. Satoko grins. “Why not both?”

“Ugh,” he says.

She’s undeterred. “Did you hear what they say?”

“…no?”

“Since he started living in the den of perversion, he got more obvious,” she whispers. “He got influenced by the westerners. He attracts all the foreign men.”

“That’s not…his fault.” Shoma’s insides churn. “Japanese men were publicly make lewd comments about him since he was like, fifteen.”

“Which is why he acts so macho when he’s in Japan. And off of the ice. To compensate.”

“Who says all this?” Shoma’s voice vibrates.

“Well,” Satoko considers. “Almost everyone.”

“They don’t know what they’re talking about.”

“How do you know?” Her eyes widen. “Have you..?”

“I don’t know,” he snaps. “But they shouldn’t be saying such things behind someone’s back. That’s not what friends do.”

“But you don’t even like him.”

“What?” He feels off axis. He steadies himself by digging his hands into the sand.

“He’s not very nice to you.” Satoko peers at him. “I’ve watched you. He … treats you different.”

Shoma wants to lie, tell her that it’s not true. But he can’t. “I’m sure there’s a reason for it,” he settles.

“What’s the reason?”

He looks out into the sea, stares at the waves pounding on Sota and Wakaba as they squeal. The salt spray hitting his face with abrasive familiarity. Something overwhelming that threatens to suck him in if he wades too deep. Best stay away, let it stay buried beneath the waves.

“He just worries for me,” he murmurs. “Or I must have offended him somehow.”

It’s easier to believe it when he says it to someone else.

Sota hears about it from Wakaba after they have settled into their shared bed at night. “Why didn’t you tell me you saw Yuzu on a date?” he demands. “I have to hear this from Wakaba?”

Shoma glances up from his phone. “It might not have been a date. He was crying.”

“You can cry on a date!”

“Is that all you kids think about?” Shoma rolls his eyes.

Sota rolls his eyes in return. “We’re teenagers. You’re the anomaly, grandpa.”

“Whatever.” Shoma burrows into the blankets. “Kick me in your sleep and I’ll end you.”

“Please do it on the ice.” Sota burrows in after him. “I’ll die dramatically and earn PCS for it.”

“You will not. I’ll make sure you ugly cry.”

Sota cackles. “Not everyone can be pretty like you, senpai.” He earns a kick under the blanket.

They fall asleep tired and happy, and it’s the first time Shoma has felt so at peace since Kanako left. He wishes Yokohama’s shows would never end.

He wakes next morning to Sota delirious with fever.

“Sota?” He shakes Sota, and gets a moan in reply. He tumbles out of bed.  

He barely remembers to pull on his shoes before running out of the room, and in the hallway realizes that he doesn’t know where the medic’s room is. And he’s left his card key and phone behind.

He knows the lobby. And Yuzu and Javi’s room, because in every hotel they’re assigned the same room number. He hesitates. He could go to the lobby, and ask for a…Tylenol? He doesn’t want to go back for his phone and make Sota get out of bed to let him in. That’s the opposite of helpful.

He walks to the end of the hallway, takes a breath, and knocks. The door cracks open to a squinting Javi, wearing nothing but boxers and an impressive pair of pecs.

“Urgh?” he says.

“Hello.” Shoma shifts. “Yuzu-”

The door swings open, Javi tumbling with it, and Yuzu stands with an equally naked pair of pecs, which are not as lame as Shoma had thought they would be, not that he had thought of such things. He’s wearing a towel around his waist. Shoma rips his gaze away.

“What’s going on,” Yuzu demands as if he’s not almost naked in front of a, well yes, actually, Shoma is in his sleepshirt and boxers and probably has bedhead too, so he isn’t one to talk. 

“Sota is sick,” Shoma says to the floor. “He’s got a fever, and I don’t know where the medic is.” He cringes at how pathetic that sounds.

Yuzu disappears, leaving Javi to hold the door open. Rapid-fire English fills the room, and Javi’s sleep clears from his eyes as he guides Shoma to a chair and starts coffee. Yuzu reappears in clothes.

“Did he ask for anything? How did he say he feels?”

“He’s not awake,” Shoma says, suddenly self-conscious. “I woke up because he was burning hot.”

Yuzu pauses. “You…share a bed?”

The new hotel layout gave them a room with one gigantic bed. But Yuzu seems to need to make Shoma feel guilty about it anyway. “…yes?”

“…and you’re not sick?”

“I didn’t go into the water.” He no longer knows if he should feel guilty about this, but decides that guilt is probably the default reaction expected of him. He pulls his shoulders inward. “He... we went to the beach together.”

Yuzu is silent. Shoma looks up to a hand waving in front of him. Yuzu impatiently holds out a hand. “Card key.”

“I didn’t…” Shoma stares back down at his feet. “I forgot it.”

Yuzu doesn’t answer. He speaks rapidly with Javi and leaves. Left to wait while Javi calls the front desk, Shoma stares down at his reflection in bitter black coffee and hates what he sees.

,

,

Apparently things get done quickly when one is Yuzuru Hanyu.

In a flurry of action, Shoma sees medics, hotel ladies, crew members, and some wandering teammates in his room. He loiters just outside, and the medic comes out to warn him not to get too close. “You should move rooms,” she says, and Shoma shakes his head.

“I’m strong. I won’t get sick. Sota would feel better to have someone around.”

Yuzu’s eyes are on him the entire time, but Shoma refuses to let himself be swayed.

“That was dumb,” Sota rasps once they’re left alone. “You’re not strong at all.”

Shoma fills a glass with water and hands it over. “That was a long time ago.”

Sota grumbles, but gratefully accepts.

With Sota in bed and the girls hiding for fear of being scolded for swimming in the sea, Shoma is back to his lone boba habit. He is leaving the hotel when he runs into Yuzu coming in, shoulders hunched and eyes on the floor. Shoma slows.

Yuzu looks up, and his face is open with such vulnerable surprise that Shoma doesn’t stop to think what he’s doing. “Are you okay?”

Yuzu blinks, and his face smoothes over. “Yes. Where are you going?”

Shoma immediately regrets starting this conversation. “Just…out?”

“Be back before practice.”

Shoma bobs his head and flees as soon as Yuzu turns away. He hums as he walks along the wall of the hotel, texting Sota.

< Did you take your medicine

> Yes

> Bring me snacks

< Doctor said soup, you pig

> As if you’d follow, come on, I’m bored

< Sleep

> I’m not you, I can’t sleep all day

< What snacks do you want

> I have a list, hang on

< Oh my god

Shoma returns with grocery bags filled to the brim. He runs into Wakaba, who drools at his loot. “I should have gotten sick,” she complains, so he tosses three bags of crackers at her. She squeals, blows a kiss, and runs away. He pushes the elevator button.

“Wow,” Tatsuki says from inside the elevator.

Yuzu picks up a bag of chips from the floor and stacks it back onto the pile. “You should watch your weight.”

“He’s fine,” Tatsuki says easily. “He’s a growing boy.”

“Your jumps don’t have height. You need to do better.” Yuzu steps out of the elevator, shrugging off Tatsuki’s sudden hand on his arm. “The audience doesn’t come here to watch a splatfest.”

The elevator door closes. Shoma chews viciously on his lip. When he returns to his room to a delighted Sota, he offers to sit and snack with him out of spite.

The snacks taste as bitter as he feels.

,

,

Thing is, despite what Yuzu thinks, Shoma remembers Yuzu from a time before this.

They had competed together. Yuzu had bowed to him, shaking his hand as if he were an equal. With the sheer force of his energy, he made sure everyone stood aside for the tiny kid that got jostled around.

It was a little embarrassing, but Shoma reveled in it.

But then something happened – he went onto Seniors, and started sweeping the world. Joy subsided from his eyes as he arched on the ice as if his soul depended on it, as if his body couldn’t contain all that raged within, and blazed his way across the world with golden laurels around his neck.

And by the time Shoma caught up, Yuzu looked at him with impassive eyes, and Shoma couldn’t stand it. So he began to bow, stare at the floor.

“Get up, you lazyhead,” Yuzu would say, kicking him up from where he had fallen from a jump. “Faster,” he would shout during laps. “Stop resting,” he would bark, pushing Shoma off the wall during breaks. “You don’t win by being just like everyone else.”

“Is Yuzukun mad at me?” Shoma asked carefully one day, and Keiji and Kanako looked at each other.

“No,” Kanako said at last. “He’s working through some issues.”

 “It’s not you,” Keiji reassured.

Except it apparently was him, because he was normal to everyone else.

“Have you landed the triple axel yet?” Yuzu would ask breathless, and Shoma would stutter no, as if he had wronged him somehow. And Yuzu would sigh. “Better get to work, Shoma.”

Shoma didn’t need Yuzu to remind him that he sucked. But he hated hearing it anyway, so he would train extra long hours at the rink, day after day, until his legs shook and he couldn’t stand. And one such day, he lay on the ice, the world dizzy and spinning, and he couldn’t see out of the tunnel.

Five years.

He pulled himself up and threw himself into the air, knowing before launching that he would fail. He came crashing, hitting every joint in his body with a sick thud. He picked himself up and quietly left the ice. In the empty locker room, he sat down heaving, and hit the locker with a hoarse shout.

Tears fell, one by one, as he slid down and bowed his head.

He was good at patience. But five years had grated his nerves thin. He was soon going to turn seventeen, and his peers grew taller and jumped higher while he lingered, and how would he ever leave Juniors without a triple axel? No one cared that he was artistic, or that he had great spins and steps and edges and speed. Jumps were all anyone cared about.

He cried all afternoon until he heard the quiet swing of the door. He looked up and wiped his eyes, but no one was there.

The next day, Yuzu showed up at his rink, demanding to see his triple axel.

,

,

Everything is better when Mihoko is here. She asks how he feels, and he moves around the ice and tells her, moves some more and tells her more. Slowly, methodically, he tells her everything he knows about himself. It’s a kind of trust he shares with almost no one else. Her love is a sure thing, and he trusts her when she makes it clear that he’s worth all the potential concern and problem that his honesty may cause. And she meets his honesty with honesty and assistance, instead of judgment or fear.

Maybe he can be honest to her because she’s strong. She doesn’t need him to reassure her that he’s okay. He doesn’t have to carry that burden for her.

So he finally gives up and digs his toe pick onto the ice. “I don’t understand the story,” he admits.

“Turandot? Or Kalaf?”

“Everyone.”

She hums.

He doesn’t understand most of these operas. Why can’t she just say no? Why does she have to kill her suitors? Sounds a bit dramatic, and he can’t dance authentically to something so contrived. He stands uselessly as the music loops, and she turns it off.

“If someone didn’t want me,” he says, “I would leave them alone.”

He doesn’t know love. But he doesn’t think that this is what love looks like.

“Love can make people selfish,” Mihoko says.

He thinks of his mother, waking up early every morning to make breakfast. His father, working late at night to make sure his business runs smoothly. Himself, bathing his infant brother. His brother, trailing him to pick up the things he drops and forgets. Love, in his world, made people the opposite of selfish.

He looks at Mihoko. There are few things he cares about, and few people he cares about. But when he sees her, he wants to be better than himself. It makes him trust her so much that he laughs when she slaps his face to get him to focus before a competition. It makes him trust her enough to say he’s not okay.

“…is this an adult thing?”

Mihoko laughs.

He dances some more, tries to get into character. A sacrificial slave girl, a murderous princess, and an obsessed suitor. Why can’t people be normal.

“How about this?” Mihoko calls as he spins to a stop. “Let yourself be at a loss. You don’t have to have the answers while you work out the movements. Seek them out as you work on them. See where it gets you.”

Shoma nods. Challenge accepted.

,

,

Rehearsal is more enjoyable. Sota being in bed is a minus, but there is Satoko, who entertains him with just enough creepiness, and Wakaba, who keeps him on his toes by shoving her camera into his face every chance she gets. “Fanservice,” she cackles when he asks her what her deal is. “My friends have a crush on you.”

“That sounds more like personal service,” he replies dryly.

“Who has a crush on Shoma?” Nobu sticks his head in between them. “Is our Shoma growing popular with the ladies?”

“He was always popular with the ladies,” Satoko says slyly. Shoma glares at her.

They laugh as he skates away. “Aww, Shoma’s shy!”

“I am not!” Shoma shoots back. “Lies!”

He doesn’t watch where he’s going, so he ends up where Tatsuki and Yuzu are standing together. Tatsuki crosses his arms with a smile. “Seventeen. Just the time for budding romance. Don’t you think, Yuzu?”

Yuzu is shaking ice off his pants. “I wouldn’t know.”

“Weren’t you that age when you did Romeo and Juliet?” Tatsuki is unfazed. “You were a passionate Juliet.”

“I was Romeo.”

“Right. Except you stabbed yourself.”

Yuzu rolls his eyes. “I played both, okay.”

“Oooh!” Wakaba glides between them. “Were you playing off of your own teenage romance?”

“No.” Yuzu’s eyes fix on Shoma. “I didn’t have time to surround myself with girls.”

Shoma’s face burns. Here it is, the negative GOE.

He’s rescued by Nobu, who laughs from the other side of the rink with: “Face it, you just didn’t have Shoma’s looks!”

Yuzu shrugs. “I’m not disputing that.”

Shoma skates off to the side and works on his choreo sequence, determined not to look at or talk to anyone for the rest of rehearsal.

“Who wouldn’t want to look like you?” Sota says that evening when Shoma whines about what happened during practice. “I know I would. Everyone in the team probably would.”

Shoma is aghast. “Why me? I’m ugly.”

“Dude, what?” Sota sits up, looking offended. “What is wrong with you? What are your standards?”

“Uh. Dai?”

“Sure,” Sota concedes. “Dai is really handsome.”

“And smart!” Shoma adds. “And really kind. And friendly, and caring. He’s perfect.”

“It’s true.” Sota grins. “Oh, and Javi!”

“Yes!” Shoma bounces a little on the bed. “He’s amazing.”

“So dreamy,” Sota sighs. “Kind, funny, smart... I’m almost jealous of Miki.” He buries his head in his pillow and coughs. “Too bad he’s taken.”

“Sota, he’s too old for you.”

“Don’t crush my little dreams!”

“…okay.”

After Sota falls asleep, Shoma gets up quietly, plugs in his phone to charge, and wanders into the bathroom. He looks at himself in the mirror.

He’s still growing, so he might change a bit more yet. But he had always looked the same. Just a bit more shrinking of baby fat to go, maybe. He sighs. His face is truly nothing to look at. Large, puppy-like eyes and a squat nose with crooked teeth. A flat, ugly cranial structure that is receiving generous assistance from braces. He grimaces to remember what he looked like before them.

He thinks of Dai’s smoldering eyes and jawline. And Javi’s, well, everything. Sota’s comment about being jealous of Miki.

He knows Sota was only half joking. He doesn’t know much about other countries, but in his country, men are supposed to be emotionless and stoic, and learning to embrace figure skating is learning to feel things one has been taught not to. And perhaps that looks a lot like learning to love whom one has been taught not to.

He is nothing remotely close to beautiful. But he still dreams of beauty when he swerves and swirls on the ice, and knows that what is polished to the onlooker is blood and toil under the surface. The entangling and clawing with oneself is what he does every day as a passion and a calling, and he imagines that such struggles are perhaps what adult love looks like, the long years of fights and tears and bonding. And if love is what his creations on the ice looks like, why is it anything less than beautiful?

He thinks of a lonely swan sparkling on the ice in a desperate bid for flight, and wonders what happens to those who live their love on the ice once their time is up. He tries hard not to think of Yuzu’s arched back, and focuses on his reflection in the mirror instead. He is everything opposite of Yuzu: stocky, short, clumsy, stubby. Heavy and hard. Big eyes, eyes that have many times been called beautiful by his people – because they look ‘foreign’, hah – blink back at him, and he wonders what it’s like to actually be foreign. Be of a land that speaks another language, that knows another culture, that knows something that he doesn’t. A land that Yuzu once touched, but will never be allowed to be a part of.

He isn’t jealous of Miki. Rather, he’s jealous of Javi, and that is not comforting in the least.

,

,

**To Be Continued**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I live for comments!


	4. Kobe

**Chapter 4: Kobe**

 

Sota recovers by opening night, and the days at Yokohama feel impossibly short. Shoma clutches at them as desperately as he clutches at Sota’s hand at the station. His chest feels brittle, like a hole punched out and creaking at the crevices, debris falling gracelessly into ruin.

Sota notices. He always notices.

“Are you okay?”

Shoma nods at the ground. Sota changes the question.

“How are you feeling?”

At that, the hole in his chest feels a little repaired, like warm honey being poured into its edges. “I’m just.” He breathes. “I’m gonna miss having someone my age around.”

It’s an understatement, but Sota understands. He pushes at Shoma’s shoulder with a fist. “That’s what you get for being too good for the rest of us.”

Shoma laughs, weak and wet.

“I’ll Skype you?” Sota says.

Shoma scowls. “What am I, your boyfriend? Stop.”

Sota’s eyes widen with delight. Oh no.

“If you’ll do me the honor!” Sota falls onto one knee. The skaters around them start to glance. “Shoma senpai!” Sota shouts hoarsely. “My idol! My goal! My eternal star.”

“Please stop,” Shoma begs.

“I daren’t ask for your hand today.” He clutches Shoma’s hand with both of his. “But! I will prove my worth by beating you!”

“Oh my god.”

“And then, standing above you on the podium, I will ask for your hand in-”

Shoma clamps his other hand on Sota’s mouth. “Stop, stop, I’ll Skype you.”

Shoma is several shades of red by the time Sota blows him a kiss from inside the train. He manages to scowl but turns with a smile bitten inside his cheeks, and finds Nobu and Miki and Yuzu standing behind him.

Miki breaks the silence. “That was adorable.”

“Did we just witness a real confession?” Nobu sounds more serious than Shoma had ever heard him. “Kids these days got guts.”

“They’re kids,” Yuzu says darkly. “What do they know of love?”

“Hey, Romeo and Juliet were teenagers.”

“And now they’re dead.”

Shoma suddenly can’t stand it. They can make fun of him for all he cares. But dismissing Sota, even if it was said in joke, suddenly makes him red hot with anger. “Excuse me,” he says, bobbing his head, and brushes by.

“Oooh,” he hears Nobu snicker. “Looks like competition.”

“Shut up,” snaps Yuzu.

Shoma plugs his ears with headphones and turns on the music. He’s going to sleep it off on the bus. Hopefully he’ll feel better when he wakes up.

He doesn’t.

He walks into the next hotel with a killer headache, drops into his bed, and rises for evening rehearsal with uncontrollable chills. He keeps his head down and stays in a corner throughout choreo steps. No one questions it, since he’s usually so bad at it anyway.

When he glides to the wall to take a drink, Yuzu materializes beside him. “Hey.”

Shoma is too tired to feel properly terrified. He bows.

“Are you sick?” Yuzu says.

Shoma shivers. “No.”

Yuzu frowns at him. “If you’re sick-”

“I’m not,” Shoma cuts. His nerves are tingling hot, and he feels stretched taut. He doesn’t have the energy to even be surprised at his own boldness. “And if I am, I’m not rooming with anyone, so there’s no danger to anyone else. I won’t be a burden.”

Yuzu is silent.

“Shall I do an axel for you?” Shoma turns, challenging, and meets wide eyes.

Yuzu looks away. “Just… preserve your strength.”

Of course. The audience isn’t coming to see a splatfest, as Yuzu said. Shoma nods, bows, watches Yuzu skate away to Nam. Nobu turns to whisper to Miki, and gets a slap on the arm for it.

Shoma skates away, determined not to hear.

He doesn’t like Yuzu. He’s a bully, and worse, it feels like a betrayal because he wasn’t. But the whispers still make him turn to look at him, take in the curve of his back and the fall of his shoulders, and it feels so violent and wrong that he shudders to catch himself look.

He knows nothing of the world outside of Japan. But he’s seen Hollywood movies, and he knows that western men are brutish and hulk-like. Yuzu is an extreme opposite of that, and Shoma hates that Yuzu fits into the western stereotype of Japanese men. Hates that people chew through such thoughts and spit them out like dirty gum in his direction.

It doesn’t help that Yuzu acts different with them either. Nobu’s speculations, and Satoko’s whispers about the den of perversion, are harder to dismiss when he sees Yuzu with the foreigners. It’s like he’s on the ice again, soft and supple and delicate, and didn’t Yuzu say he was most himself on the ice?

He sees Yuzu turn, clinging to Javi’s arm with a childlike laugh, and it’s such a contrast from the samurai fortitude of his Japanese interviews. Shoma wonders: if his performances on the ice is the truest he shows of himself, what does that make of the rest of his everyday life?

He tries not to think about it. It’s not like Yuzu’s personal life has any bearing on his.

Thankfully, he can’t hear Nobu gossip the next day, because his hearing is shot. He feels removed from the world, as if swimming in deep waters; everyone feels like distant strangers coming together to share a moment together before scattering again to disappear into the crevice of their own lives. They’re mostly older than him; soon they will fade like dying stars, and then he’ll be fading too. They bud, they bloom, and they fade, so quickly. Replaceable. He thinks of the sand beneath his feet and the constant coming and going of the waves.

The world melts away.

When he blinks his sight back to focus, Nobu is smiling down at him. “Hey there, little Yuzu.” He pokes his forehead. “Been fighting the lonely battle, huh?”

Apparently he had collapsed on the ice, breaking up rehearsal. Nobu laughs at his horror. “Don’t worry! We’ll party with drinks after makeup rehearsal. In your honor.”

“I’m sorry,” Shoma coughs.

Nobu ruffles his hair. “You should have said something. You would have cracked your head open if Yuzu hadn’t caught you.”

Shoma doesn’t know what to do with this information.

< I got found out today

> Ooo, was it dramatic

< Sadly yes, I passed out in the middle of rehearsal

> oh wooooow

> hang on

 _Higuchi Wakaba has joined the chat_.

Wakaba: OMG SHOMAAAAAA 

Wakaba: SO DRAMA

Wakaba: I LOVE IT

Shoma: …thanks

Wakaba: So who’s the prince that carried you off

Shoma: A stretcher, probably

Wakaba: OH COME ON

Shoma: I’m just a sick skater being taken care of by my senior skaters, what do you want

Sota: A DRAMATIC REVEAL

Wakaba: ^

Shoma: Apparently Yuzu caught me

Sota: Nice.

Wakaba: OMG WAS HE WATCHING

Wakaba: LIKE A KNIGHT

Wakaba: Hang on I gotta tell the girls

Shoma: what

Sota texts him privately after. He’s concerned.

> Are you okay?

Shoma thinks about it.

< I mean I’m not dead so yes?

He can practically see Sota rolling his eyes before changing the question.

> How do you feel?

< Like… I couldn’t disappoint him more if I tried

> Nothing more to lose, then?

< Silver lining!

> Yay!

> But how did he even notice?

< He watches me a lot

> Maybe he cares?

< About me ruining everything for everyone, yes

> Dude, I’ve seen you, he’s always taking care of you

< He…takes care of you too?

> But he doesn’t come seeking me out to make sure I’m included, or fix my hair

< He fixes Satton’s hair

> Or pull me out for a jump, or fix my shirt, or fix my belt, or fix my earphones

< Okay, okay, I’m special, okay

Shoma doesn’t tell Sota that all of this is for show. Because if he keeps it in, maybe it will be real. Maybe he can forget about those impassive, judging eyes for a moment and believe that Yuzu is as kind as he seems on camera.

Sota does not approve of Shoma keeping his sickness under wraps. Which is understandable. What’s not understandable is why Sota insists on the most dramatic ways to reveal it.

> You should collapse on the ice after performances.

< If I do, kill me

> You collapse during practice all the time!

< Yeah but the audience is paying to see me score TES and PCS, not Pity Points

> If the great Yuzu can do it, you can too

< Well he was good and he looks frail, I’m not and I don’t

< I’ll just be the kid with the excuses

> So you’d rather crawl backstage and collapse in a closet so no one can find you dying proud and alone

< That was just that one time, okay

> Maybe I should tell, people need to take better care of you

< I will end you if you tell

> You make a lot of empty threats, my love

< …good night

Maybe Sota was onto something, with this…keeping in touch thing. Shoma feels less lonely than before. Especially when his fellow skaters visit with admonishments and treats. He smiles, bobs his head, and sucks on candy while they laugh. It’s nice. They’ve always taken care of him. As Sota had said, it was the nature of the beast when he was flying past his own age group so fast.

But still, it makes him a little breathless. Perhaps because he now sees how much they care. Kindness is easier to appreciate when there is something next to it in contrast.

Yuzu never comes to visit.

,

,

Shoma: I’m stuck in bed, help

He’s banned from practice. The frustration sits beneath his skin like an itch. The medic has banned gaming due to the fatigue from eye strain, so he spends his time texting.

_Higuchi Wakaba has shared 24 photos._

Shoma: WTH

Sota: MY NEW WALLPAPERS

Shoma: Why do you have so many angles

Sota: All that’s missing is the ring!

Shoma: Sota you’re fifteen, oh my god

Sota: Perfectly marriageable age just half a century ago, Shoma

Shoma: …

Sota: Hey check out Yuzu senpai’s face, hahahaha

Sota: He looks like he swallowed a slug

Wakaba: OMG HE DOES

Wakaba: Miki looks delighted

Wakaba: She ships it

Shoma: What does that even mean

Wakaba: We support you Shoma and Sota

Shoma: Stop it, no you don’t

Sota: I kinda do

Shoma: Get out of my chat

He counts the days. His fever drops quickly, and he has plenty to eat via Nobu’s leftovers delivery; apparently Yuzu is in a meat soup kick and grossly overestimates his own portions, so Shoma ends up with delicious meat every meal and practices hand-eye coordination by picking out the vegetables. On the fourth day, he goes to evening rehearsal.

Nobu and Miki fight to be the first to paw at him. He bobs his head, smiles, lets people pinch his cheeks. Javi hugs him tight enough to leave him breathless, and Johnny comes sliding on his knees and bows like a knight. Mr. Plushenko claps. Yuzu stares.

Choreo steps have all but escaped him. He sighs as he struggles through them.

“Left.” Yuzu is at his side.

Shoma corrects his steps, almost tumbles. Yuzu catches his arm in a firm grip. Shoma bobs his head.

“How’s your fever?”

Surrounded as he is by kindness, it’s easier to believe that this, too, is kindness. “It’s fine. Thank you, senpai. I heard you helped me.”

Yuzu frowns. He lifts up Shoma’s chin and inspects him like a pet for sale. He ends with a sweaty palm against Shoma’s sweaty forehead, rather uselessly. He looks like he wants to say something, probably something scalding about dragging the team down or being unprofessional with his conditioning or –

“Shoma Shoma Shoma! I have a proposition!” Nobu drags him away. Which isn’t much of a save, because he has the worst idea.

“Uh, but. I already do a lot of interviews?”

“You need to show them your amazingly everyday self! Off of the ice! The world needs to see how cute you are!”

“They really don’t.”

“Shomaaa.”

In the end he agrees only because Nobu makes sad faces and promises that it will be informal, and not embarrassing at all.

He lies.

Shoma finishes the interview the next day with a burn all the way down his collarbones, because they chant at him to do a cantilever at the camera and he just. It’s…a recurring theme, it seems, for fellow skaters to interview him in the most embarrassing way possible. He flees into a shadow and hides until Nobu hops away to where Yuzu is sucking on a juice packet. Yuzu scowls.

“No.”

“Come on, you love the attention!”

“I told you: either him or me.”

Shoma stills. Surely he couldn’t have heard right. Surely even someone as attention-starved as Yuzu couldn’t be this petty. He must be missing context. He must be.

“He’s used to it,” Nobu protests. “He’s been famous since like, before you!”

“And you’re not helping!”

The two seem to have completely forgotten that he’s still around somewhere. Shoma makes himself as small as he can.

“Do you want another Dai? Is that what you want?” Yuzu’s voice is venomous.

“Yuzu.”

“He’s already imbalanced. Make him any more famous and he becomes a Takahashi.”

Shoma holds his breath. Yuzu and Dai may not be the best of friends, but he had never thought that Yuzu would speak of him with such disgust.

Could it be because Dai is..?

He squashes the thought.

“Yuzu, you can’t fight the tide.” Nobu sounds patient. “We’re curbing it the best we can. Why don’t you trust us?”

Shoma doesn’t want to hear this anymore. He backs away, and trips over a pipe on the wall. By the time Nobu fusses over him and he gets back on his feet, Yuzu is gone.

“Did you hear anything?”

Shoma can’t answer.

Nobu takes him to the break room, sits him down on a foldup chair. “You can ask,” he says, perching on a table and looking down at Shoma. “I can’t promise to answer, though.”

Shoma curls in. “Why does Yuzu not want me on air?”

He dreads the answer, but needs to hear it.

Nobu hesitates, climbs down from the table, and kneels in front of Shoma. It makes him feel impossibly young. “Remember how we’re taught to be well-rounded skaters? Complete package?”

Shoma nods.

“Sometimes…we get people like you and Yuzu, who are more than skaters. You’re stars.” He hesitates. “We just disagree on how to media-train you.”

Treating him like a puppy is media training? He chews on his lip. “How does this relate to Dai?”

The edges around Nobu’s eyes go taut, as if recalling a painful memory. Shoma remembers that for all his childlike antics, he had stood shoulder to shoulder with the giant Takahashi. “Dai was a star. But he was…too human. It cost him a lot.”

Shoma tries to understand. He lives in a time when cameras are incessantly shoved into their faces since childhood. When talk show hosts take apart his every word and every move with celebrity guests in slow motion. Making headlines out of a single word, a simple yawn. He tries to indulge them. He gets cheered on by them, after all, and he should be grateful.

But people hurting Dai for not being perfect, that is too much to digest. Why would anyone be unkind to someone they don’t know? Someone who brings so much joy and pride? To what end?

Nobu squeezes his knee. “Anything else?”

Really, there is just one more question. Shoma looks up, bravely meets Nobu’s eyes. “What is my imbalance?”

Nobu looks at him with such grim finality, as if he had been waiting, and dreading, this question. “You’re too young.” He pushes back a strand of hair out of Shoma’s eyes. “Too good.” He smiles, sad. “And too beautiful.”

,

,

Mihoko tells him to do the segment. It will be good for publicity, she says.

“But Yuzu might be doing it,” he pleads. “They don’t need me.”

“I think they want the top two skaters in the country,” she says. “And that means you!”

He’s only seventeen. How is this his life.

Yuzu is in it after all, presumably because he’s the complete package. And he’s perfect; he laughs and talks and bullies Nobu for eating like a girl, and holds up the interview without needing Shoma’s input. Whatever Shoma had caught him saying the other day seems to have evaporated under spotlight, as if him being friendly on camera cancels it out. Does it? Shoma isn’t sure. He focuses on the cake. If his mouth is busy, they won’t make him talk.

Then Nobu abandons them mid-filming.

“Oh my,” Yuzu says, and laughs at the camera. He goes on as if nothing has happened. “Let’s see, what’s the next question – what’s normal among male figure skaters?” He looks at Shoma. Shoma blinks.

“We don’t really have a strict relationship, do we?” Yuzu smiles.

“No,” Shoma answers. Because what else is he supposed to say. “We’re pretty close.”

This show can’t possibly get worse.

“Next topic: love and marriage!” Nobu announces after returning. Shoma was wrong; the show has gotten worse.

He cringes through the questions. Why do they always ask this? What if he doesn’t want it? Date a pretty girl, get married, have children?

Apparently, not wanting that is not an option. Any other lifestyle is simply unheard of. It does not exist.

He shakes off the question by saying he’s not interested. It’s an easy thing, hiding behind his profession. He wonders how Dai handles it now that he’s retired, and tries not to look at Yuzu when he agrees immediately. Shoma resolutely stuffs cake into his face.

,

,

Geniuses apparently do triple axels for fun. During rehearsal breaks. Instead of resting.

Shoma hides and watches, imitates when no one’s looking. Yuzu only stops when Javi says something with a knowing chuckle, and Yuzu punches him in the arm. He’s red in the ears.

“Oh my god!”

Everyone turns to Nobu. He’s staring into his phone. “Look at this picture!”

Everyone goes back to what they were doing.

“No, guys, it’s not my wife! It’s our babies!”

“Cute,” Miki says monotonously.

“No, not MY babies!” Nobu flails. “Sota is proposing to Shoma!”

Fingers fly to phones.

Howls erupt. Catcalls and wolf whistles abound, and Mr. Plushenko claps with furious conviction. Shoma ignores it and flies around the outside loop, speeding through the ice, until Yuzu grabs his arm and he has no choice but to twizzle to a stop.

Yuzu looks at him, terrifyingly impassive. “It wasn’t a joke?”

He lifts up the phone for Shoma to see. Sota is on his knee, holding Shoma’s hand, and a pair of silver rings glint on his palm. The caption reads: “Proposal at the Farewell Station”.

“Um.”

“Kids these days sure go fast!” Nobu howls. “I didn’t know you exchanged pair rings already!”

“It’s so pretty,” Miki coos. “Who knew Sota was such a romantic?”

“How else would he beat competition?” Nobu cackles. “Shoma’s a looker!”

Yuzu squeezes his arm. Shoma lets out a hiss of pain.

“Oookay,” Javi says, gliding in between them and firmly detangling Yuzu’s fingers from Shoma’s arm. Yuzu moves around Javi to stare him down, ignoring Javi’s quiet English.

Shoma backs up against the wall. He thought he hated impassive Yuzu, but this… whatever it is, this Yuzu is worse.

“Hey, hey.” Javi places a hand on Yuzu’s chest and gently pushes him back. “Yuzu. Stop.” He speaks some more, and Yuzu looks at Javi at last, and spits out a torrent of English like a river of wrath.

Silence trembles between them, only broken by Stephane quietly skating up to Shoma to pluck him out from between Javi and the wall. “Choreo, Shoma.”

Shoma gratefully latches onto Stephane’s arm like a sled on a dog. Yuzu jerks in his direction, and Javi bars him with a muscular arm. The rink is silent but for Yuzu’s rising voice, Javi’s steady counters, and Shoma keeps his head down through it all. He can’t remember the steps, and Stephane practically carries him through them. Javi surreptitiously guides Yuzu off of the ice as they argue.

Stephane doesn’t let go of Shoma until the two leave the rink, their voices lost in the twilight outside. Shoma slows to a stop, looks up in dread. Miki is chewing on her nail. Johnny’s face is hard. Mr. Plushenko gives him a sympathy thumbs-up, and pitying looks are focused on him from everyone.

He can’t do this. He should not have come.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, bows to everyone. "I’m sorry.” He scrambles off of the ice.

He is near the door when Johnny catches up with him, gently grasps his arm. As much as Shoma wants to shake it off, he can’t, because Johnny doesn’t deserve that. So he turns, shaking, and Johnny points at Shoma’s pocket until he produces his phone. After punching in a room number and a time into it, Johnny gives him a squeeze on the shoulder, and lets him flee.

Shoma: What have you done Wakaba

Wakaba: What?

Shoma: The rings

Wakaba: rings????

Wakaba: I don’t know what you’re talking about but for once I’m innocent? I swear

Shoma: Lies

Shoma: You took those pictures

Wakaba: I swear!

Shoma: Okay okay

Shoma: The caption doesn’t sound like something you’d write

Shoma: OMG SATTON

Sota: What…is going on?

Shoma: I’m gonna kill her

Shoma: I’m gonna kill her with my thighs

Shoma: I’m gonna suplex her into the ice

Shoma: She won’t even be able to scream

Wakaba: Okay, Shoma, we need a committee on this before you go on a rampage

Shoma: what committee

Shoma: what no don’t

_Miyahara Satoko has joined the chat._

Wakaba: SATTON DID YOU DO A THING WITH A RING

_Miyahara Satoko has shared a photo._

Wakaba: OMG HAHAHAAHA

Sota: Good taste

Shoma: Say that to Yuzu

Sota: Why, what’s his problem?

Shoma: @#)($&@#)*^$#@*#&@(@(

Sota: Whoa man, do we need a call

Satoko: It was a joke.

Sota: Yeah, I don’t get the big deal?

Wakaba: Ooo maybe he’s had a traumatic childhood?

Shoma: Shut up all of you

Sota: Oh

Sota: Crap

Sota: I’m sorry Shoma, I didn’t know

Shoma: What now

Sota: He’s homophobic, isn’t he

Sota: I mean, he’s a figure skater

Sota: I didn’t think he would be like everyone else

Satoko: Even if he’s homophobic, doesn’t give him any right to flip out.

Satoko: Did he flip out?

Shoma: Satton if this is some social experiment I swear to god

Satoko: Why are YOU flipping out?

Shoma: He and Javi got into a fight

Wakaba: OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sota: DRAMA

Shoma: Because of me

Shoma: Well, the picture and the ring

Satoko: Sounds like a personal problem.

Wakaba: Dang, gurl

Shoma: WHAT DO I DO @#)($&@#)*$#@

Satoko: Nothing? You didn’t do anything wrong.

Shoma: I would like my life here not to be hell, it’s already bad enough

Wakaba: Dang, is it that bad? Sorry ☹ We didn’t know

Satoko: Only you didn’t know. We all knew. Yuzu-senpai has issues.

Sota: Issues with Shoma.

Wakaba: Is he picking on Shoma just because Shoma likes boys? That’s really mean.

Wakaba: I’m so disappointed

Wakaba: I thought we all got each other’s backs

Shoma: I thought so too but all of you are not helping right now so

Shoma: Okay I need to go

Sota: Love you!

Shoma: I hate all of you

Shoma has half an hour until the time Johnny had indicated. He showers and puts on fresh clothes, and sits on his bed to consider calling to say he can’t make it. His stomach feels heavy and his chest feels ill.

Otuside of their community, Yuzu’s reaction would be normal. It’s disgusting, after all. Strange. Shoma has always been a loner, relatively sheltered from negative opinions about, well, everything – but still, spending a majority of time on the ice where people treat it as nothing out of the ordinary, it still feels jarring.

Gay. Homosexual. How strange that people alienate things they don’t understand by giving them names. How strange that they do not speak of them at all, as if they don’t exist. Shoma remembers the countless questions thrown in Dai’s direction regarding wife and girlfriend and marriage and oh, it hurts his chest to remember his pained smiles. The silence, how suffocating it must have been.

If Sota’s guess is right, then Javi was right to take Yuzu out of the rink. The ice is a sacred place. On it should only be beauty. Love. Pain and suffering too, maybe, but not hate. Definitely not loathing, or disgust, or disdain. He thinks of Johnny’s hardened face and wonders how he’s supposed to fix this.

He can’t. He feels so helpless. Some Senior he is. Always being taken care of.

Shoma gets up and puts on his jacket. Satoko is right; it was obvious to everyone at the time that Sota was joking, and photophopping rings into the picture was only an extension of the joke. Everyone had fun with it. But if Shoma hadn’t been with the others… if he had been alone with Yuzu. He shudders to think. The relief in knowing that he’s not alone, that other adults are there to defend him and show him that Yuzu is wrong, is only a pale thing compared to the bitterness of knowing that he needs protection from Yuzu.

Shoma sits down on the bed again, and buries his face in his knees.

He doesn’t want to think this. He doesn’t want to need protection against Yuzu. Yuzu was always protecting him. He had always been –

He pushes his eyes with his fists.

Yuzu wasn’t unkind. He was rough around the edges, but in the end his actions drove Shoma to be better. Maybe he was afraid that Shoma would do something stupid and get caught and get hurt.

Or tarnish their image, a voice whispers, and he squashes it down with fierce anger.

His phone vibrates. It’s Johnny, asking if he wants to be picked up.

Shoma stares at the message. What must that have looked like to Johnny just now? It’s an open secret, no longer a secret, but still, no one talks about the possibility. It’s an Other thing, the abnormal thing. No one asks if they ever plan to have a partner and settle down with an adopted child or a dog or never at all. He wonders what it’s like to live the world in Johnny’s shoes, being treated as if people like him didn’t exist. Or an anomaly, an exception, an afterthought.

Lonely, maybe.

Yuzu might be open and kind and loving to Johnny, but at the end of the day, he might just be one of those people who smile and shut the door. I’m okay with the gays as long as they don’t touch me, he’d heard, many times, from his schoolfriends. Maybe for Yuzu, it’s okay for those Other people to be gay. Just not his own.

Shoma feels sick. Why so much disdain for things that don’t affect them? Why so much loathing for things they simply do not understand?

Why are people cruel for no reason?

He curls up on the bed, watching the phone light up again with another message from Johnny. Asking if he’s okay.

He starts to type that he’s okay, but he crawls out of bed. Sometimes, words mean nothing. Kindness is in action, in Johnny’s arms as they pull him to his chest when Shoma shows up at his room. Stephane’s hand at his back as they tuck him into a dark corner booth in a restaurant and order him dinner. Their soft laughter as they sandwich him between them and show him kitten videos over ice cream. Kindness is not proclaiming that one is okay with gay people, or silently ignoring their existence; it’s treating him as they always have treated him. Whole. Human. Beloved.

Shoma ends up bowing his head and curling up in the booth, dropping hot tears onto half-eaten ice cream, and lets Johnny rock him in his arms while Stephane quietly waves the server away.

,

,

**To Be Continued**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll be going back to work soon so the updates won't be as frequent. But reading comments and feedback really helps motivate me <3


	5. Summer's End

**Chapter 5: Summer’s End**

“I heard you’ve been sick!”

The tour is winding down, which means farewell parties, which means the queen of parties is visiting. Kanako pulls him into a violent hug. “It’s always you healthy ones with the most ridiculous colds.”

Something about the hug feels different, but he shoves that feeling beneath her scent and revels in the constant things. She holds him tight, knowing he will put up token resistance; she keeps him from overtraining by demanding a tour; he leads her around the hotel lobby and shows her where all the free candy baskets are, and runs away when she tries to rope him into group meals.

It makes the rink that much emptier.

He starts a crossover and thinks about what it was that felt off about hugging her. He’s entering a jump when it hits him. He was broader than her. How could he not realize? He was broader than her. That was why the hug felt off; she couldn’t reach as she used to.

The jump happens as a half-thought, and he comes crashing down. He wrenches his hip in a move he immediately regrets, and lets his hands take the rest of the fall. He shakily rises, shakes out his numb arms, and goes back into position.

He wakes the next day with unusable arms.

After standing uselessly in the shower, he gives up and returns to bed, only to rise for evening rehearsal. After struggling into clothes, he heads to the locker room only to realize halfway that he hadn’t thought this through. It’s too late though, because Javi looks over his shoulder and spots him. He pokes Yuzu, whispers something, and walks inside; Yuzu lingers, waiting.

Crap.

They haven’t spoken since that evening of his outburst. (Satoko had sent him a boba delivery as a begrudging apology for the photoshop, as if that would solve it. He’s going to wrangle boba out of her for the rest of his life.) Shoma had hoped to avoid him until he left the tour after this city, but Yuzu is good at destroying his hopes.

“Hey.”

He bobs his head.

“Why weren’t you at practice?”

First time speaking since that awkward evening, and it’s to give Shoma negative GOE on life. Shoma sighs to himself.

“Are you still sick?”

He shakes his head, looking at his feet.

“So you just slept in?”

Shoma is in hell.

He’s saved by a wave of skaters entering the locker room, forcing them to separate. He hides in a corner until everyone is out on the ice, and upturns his bag to spill his skates onto the floor. He manages to shove his feet into them, but the comes up blank for the rest.

Yuzu’s skates enter his view.

Shoma spits out a lace from between his teeth, peers up. Takes off his foot from the other lace. Yuzu has a strange look on his face.

“What happened to your arms?”

Shoma blinks down at his skates. “I fell on them.”

“Did you get checked?”

Shoma shakes his head. “It’s just muscle shock. My fingers won’t move for a few days, but I can skate.”

Yuzu doesn’t move. Shoma distracts himself from the terrible silence by counting how many loops the laces have gone through: exactly zero.

Yuzu kneels.

Shoma blinks as glossy hair invades his sight. It looks like cocoon silk, soft and familiar, and he wants to wrap himself up in it and sleep until he can wake up clear-headed and strong. Yuzu finishes lacing his boot and beckons to the other foot; Shoma untucks it from under the bench and watches in a daze.

After neatly tucking in the knot, Yuzu grasps Shoma’s ankle for a moment, then sits back on his heels. “Good?”

His face is open, but without the terrifying media polish. Shoma wants to keep looking at that face until he can emblazon it into memory. He rises shakily and shifts from foot to foot. “Yes. Thank you.”

He’s not about to say otherwise anyway, but the skates are meticulously laced to perfect comfort. Yuzu stands, hands on hips, and they both turn to the door to find a swarm of skaters plastered to the doorway. Shoma freezes.

“What?” Yuzu snaps. “Go rehearse.”

They scatter. “Woooow,” says what sounds like Kanako’s voice. Mr. Plushenko claps.

Wakaba: GUESS WHAT NOBU REPORTS SEEING IN THE LOCKER ROOM TODAY

Sota: Oooo

Wakaba: Yuzu senpai KNEELING in front of Shoma, BOWING his head like a KNIGHT

Sota: Hey, I kneeled in front of Shoma too

Wakaba: Yeah, WHILE PROPOSING

Sota: Oooo was he trying to steal you from me, Shoma

Satoko: I hope he was begging forgiveness for his jerk reaction the other day.

Satoko: Any news on what he actually said?

Sota: Nope, even Gossip Central refuses to translate

Wakaba: Nobu refusing to share gossip???!!!!

Satoko: Maybe it was too personal.

Shoma: Yeah probably

Satoko: Like, Javi was dating Yuzu but refused to get pair rings and seeing Sota’s ring for Shoma made Yuzu mad at Javi and they fought

Shoma: …I was with you until ‘too personal’

Wakaba: OMG he wasn’t being homophobic???

Wakaba: He’s actually gay too????

Satoko: Why not both?

Wakaba: SHOMA, WAS HE PROPOSING OR APOLOGIZING

Satoko: Why not both??

Shoma: He was lacing my boots!

Wakaba: OMGGGG

Sota: Wooooow

Satoko: So both.

Wakaba: It’s just like that one scene

Sota: Jesus washing Judas’ feet?

Wakaba: I was gonna go with proposal in that K-drama Mao just showed us but that works too??

Shoma shuts his phone off. He has terrible friends.

But it happens again the next evening. Yuzu is kneeling with that glossy fall of silk hair in Shoma’s face when he speaks. “You should still come to practice. Ask for help.”

Shoma would rather not. Yuzu then looks up as if reading his thoughts.

“Did you tell anyone?”

Shoma shakes his head, looking at his knees.

Yuzu finishes with a tug. “Come to practice anyway.”

Shoma resigns himself to mothering noises from everyone. But rehearsal passes by in peace; it’s as if Yuzu had actually kept quiet, as he did with Shoma’s sickness, so, okay, maybe that was unfair, Yuzu wasn’t always a blabbermouth when it came to things Shoma wanted to hide.

Or maybe he just doesn’t talk about you because he doesn’t think about you, a part of him whispers, and he escapes the thought by burrowing into bed earlier than usual.

He’s roused by crew knocking on doors, reminding everyone that they need to move hotels for some housekeeping reasons he forgot about. He sleepiy kicks his things from the floor into his suitcase, maneuvers the wheeled luggage with his legs, and breathes a sigh of relief as he nears the bus.

“Luggage compartment is packed,” the driver announces. “Please carry your luggage with you.”

…crap.

He turns to move to the back of the line. The thought of people waiting as he struggles makes him break out in sweat.

“Hey, you. With the luggage. Get on.” The bus driver points at him.

Shoma breaks out in sweat.

“What’s the holdup?” A hand slaps Shoma’s back, and it’s Yuzu, leaping onto the bus ahead of him and hauling his luggage onto the bus. Shoma follows in a daze as Yuzu stashes the luggage and slides into a seat; the bus is mostly packed, so he sinks down next to Yuzu and discreetly inches away.

A mighty arm wraps around his neck from behind.

“I saw that!” Kanako migrates to his head for a savage ruffle. “What’s going on here? What’s the dirt you have on him?”

“What. What are you talking about. Stop.”

“Oh ho ho. Yuzu never helps younger kids with menial tasks. Spill.”

Yuzu turns to scowl at her. “This is why you don’t have a boyfriend, Kana.”

Kanako launches grabby hands at Yuzu’s hair instead. Shoma sinks into his seat in relief.

Yuzu grabs Shoma’s luggage with his own upon arrival, sets it down, and disappears among the crowd into the hotel. Shoma falls behind as always, and is the last to see Keiji leaning against the wall. He stops dead in his tracks.

“Thought I’d come visit you here instead of Nagoya, since it’s closer to where I live.”

Shoma has to take quick little breaths to push down the bubbling of relief at the sight. Keiji takes the luggage from between his knees, lowers his voice.

“Yuzu tells me you’re hurt.”

Shoma nods, a lump rising in his throat. “I can’t even shower,” he whispers. “It hurts to eat. It sucks.”

Keiji steers Shoma’s luggage toward the entrance. “Okay, let’s go to your room and see what you need.”

They pass by Yuzu, who nods at them before walking out without breaking his stride. Shoma blinks.

It’s a good thing Keiji knows. He’s the one person Shoma would have told if he were a part of the cast. But another part of him whispers: see, Yuzu didn’t want to keep taking care of you.

He hurries in after Keiji, determined to squash that thought.

,

,

The farewell party is well underway when he enters. A traditional foldup table on the floor holds snacks and green bottles, because Mao never visits without her stash, and Satoko is there because she couldn’t miss a chance to play drinking games with the Seniors? He doesn’t understand how her brain works.

He gets pulled between Nobu and Kanako, and resigns himself to being drenched in Mao’s beloved soju by the end of the night. At least they’re not playing the King game – last time Shoma witnessed the debacle, Yuzu and Nobu had kissed a little too hard for anyone’s photos to be appropriate. The game had also involved embarrassing phone calls and prank confessions, but the kiss is seared into Shoma’s head and he doesn’t care who’s there, if they make him play that game he’s running away.

The door opens, and Yuzu pokes his head in. “Wha?” he blinks. “Is this where everyone was?”

“We thought you were with Javi!” Nobu sings. “Join us!”

“Javi’s bar-hopping with the overseas folk.” Yuzu carefully sits, eying Shoma. “Why are our minors drinking?”

“Cool, we have the cookies he hates.” Kanako shoves a bag at Yuzu’s face. “This can count as soju for you.” Yuzu blanches, but opens the bag.

“All right, you know the rules!” Mao places a stuffed bear at the center of the table. “Grab the bear if you have kissed a guy!”

Satoko snatches the bear. Nobu and Yuzu faceplant on the table.

“Insult to injury,” Kanako complains. “Even these two ugly boys have experience I don’t.”

Yuzu pulls a face. “We don’t exactly have a lineup; we kissed each other.”

Nobu smacks his lips and cranes his head forward. Kanako slaps his lips. “Yuzu, then?” Nobu pushes Yuzu forward, and Yuzu covers his face with determined octopus fingers.

“Never! I’d rather drink than kiss Kana.”

Kanako pries his fingers off and shoves a cookie into his mouth. He gags. “Gross.”

Nobu takes a swig, and sings: “If you have ever been groped by the opposite sex!”

Shoma finds Keiji looking at him, so he stares back.

“Oh!”

He reaches as Nobu elbows Yuzu, so Yuzu reaches as well. His long arm gets to the bear first and Shoma splats on the table.

“Look at these wild young men!” Nobu whistles. “More experience than the ladies!”

Yuzu returns the bear to the center. “I would hope so, in this case.”

“Such a gentleman!”

Kanako rolls her eyes. “We wish.”

“Aw, he just picks on you because he likes you.”

“Gross,” Yuzu and Kanako chorus.

It is indeed gross. Shoma cringes as he downs his drink. Why Mao likes this stuff, he has no idea. Yuzu silently passes a glass of water past Nobu, and Shoma gulps it down.

“If you’ve been groped by the same sex!” Kanako shouts.

Yuzu is apparently too busy staring at Shoma to reach for the bear, and ends up losing to Satoko again. Keiji looks at Shoma. “Dude. You should have reached for that.”

Oh.

Shoma burns red hot while he drinks. Yuzu bites down another cookie with a grimace.

Keiji grins. “If you have sat on guys’ laps.”

Shoma grabs the bear quickly this time. Yuzu gets there after, and munches on another cookie.

“If you have ever kissed a girl,” Yuzu says. A mad dash follows. Nobu cackles with the bear while Keiji and Mao groan. Everyone stares at Mao. She huffs.

“Oh, shut up. She’s gorgeous, you all would have too if she let you.”

“Oh, is it someone from a nearby country?” Nobu cackles. “Who turned you into a soju snob?”

“Someone who whooped your ass,” Yuzu snickers, “and has killer eyeliner?”

“What do you know of eyeliner?” Mao rolls her eyes.

“A man’s priority,” Yuzu says gravely, “is to look beautiful. I know everything about eyeliner.”

“Cheers to that!” Keiji says, clinking glasses with Mao.

Shoma watches Yuzu, confusion bubbling in his gut. It’s okay to joke about Mao kissing a girl? But it wasn’t okay to see Sota joking with Shoma?

Jackass.

He takes a swig. It’s cool against his throat, almost sweet, and burns its way down. Completely two-faced, just like someone he knows. He takes another swig.

He starts to feel bleary by the time they get around to Satoko for the fourth – or fifth? – time. “Forbidden love,” she says gravely, and Shoma boos. She throws a candy wrapper at him. The older ones fall quiet, and Yuzu slowly reaches for the bear.

“You’re the only one.” Keiji clears his throat. “You have to drink – er – eat.”

“I,” Shoma reaches convulsively. “I’ll drink.”

All eyes turn to Shoma. He determinedly pours himself a glass. Surely everyone here has had a crush on a teacher or two? He sees Yuzu looking at him with wide eyes bright under the lights, like a striken animal. He closes his eyes and drains the glass.

It all becomes a blur from there.

There is a jacket. It is a very warm jacket. Extra big. There must be some sort of science behind that, he thinks. Maybe something about volume of heat. There are also hushed voices. Yuzu’s is extra pretty, melodic from trying to be quiet. He snuggles into the jacket, hoping the voice continues.

And then – something. He’s floating, and he rubs his cheek against the warm surface near his face. He feels like a sky emperor on a flying saucer. It’s a fun ride; there’s barely any turbulence.

But then Keiji is ripping the curtains open and sunlight is burning his eyelids, and Shoma cries out at the cruelty of it all.

“It’s almost 2 pm.” Keiji snatches the blankets away from Shoma’s desperate hands. “You have to get to the station.” He goes about cleaning up Shoma’s mess and gathering up his things. He’s entirely too chipper for someone who had played a drinking game the previous night.

Oh.

Right.

“I… did I pass out?”

“Duh.”

Oh.

“I still made it back to my room, though?”

“Uh, no?” Keiji gives him a disdainful glance. “Do you not know you? Yuzu carried you to your room.”

Shoma is awake now. He is so awake that he sits up bolt quick, heart in his eardrums. “What.”

“It’s fine. he wasn’t drinking anyway, so he didn’t mind leaving early.”

Keiji is a bad friend, Shoma decides. He doesn’t care if it’s true; Keiji is a bad friend right now. Shoma throws himself back onto the mattress. He is going to die of the loneliness of having bad friends.

Keiji rolls his eyes. “Don’t be dramatic. He used to carry you around all the time.”

But Shoma plasters himself to the bed and refuses to be pulled off until Keiji gives up and goes to a chair to peel off a jacket. “Huh. I guess Yuzu didn’t take his jacket back.”

Shoma snaps upright again.

Keiji tosses the jacket at Shoma’s face. “I guess you’ll have to hang onto it until you see him this fall.”

Shoma eyes the jacket sadly. It’s warm in his hands.

,

,

He discovers while seated next to Keiji on the bus that his phone has a new contact.

> I’ll wait.

Shoma blinks.

He scrolls up and down. Sent past midnight. Around the time that Shoma was supposedly carried off in a drunken stupor.

“What does this mean?” He shoves the phone at Keiji’s face.

Keiji flinches back and squints. “It’s from Yuzu. He’s waiting.”

“Thanks, I can read.”

“Really? I’m not sure sometimes.”

Shoma kicks Keiji’s ankle. Keiji snickers.

“Did he lend you money?”

“I … don’t know?” It doesn’t sound likes something Shoma would do.

“Maybe you fell asleep on the toilet or something. Why don’t you ask him?”

Keijis is entirely useless, Shoma decides, and flips through his messages. Various goodbyes and see-you-soons flood his phone. Gratitude and promises, full of wistful joy that fights the tide of loneliness that surely they must feel.

He stops at the messages from Satoko. Apparently she has been a terrifying mix of Wakaba and Kanako all along, because she has taken pictures of the drunken shenanigans for all to see. He looks uniformly sleepy and confused in most of them, but it’s entertaining to see Kanako and Nobu get progressively drunk through the night.

He pauses at the last photo. She had sent it privately, only to him.

Yuzu is standing with his back hunched like a turtle. On top of him nestles Shoma, draped on top of him like a baby turtle, arms and legs dangling from beneath Yuzu’s jacket. His cheek is smooshed against Yuzu’s neck, and he looks like he’s five. Yuzu is craning his head to look back at him, smiling with such softness that Shoma’s heart does a weird flip.

Keiji peers over his shoulder. “Oh, cute. Just like the old days.”

“He. What?”

“Oh my god, why is your memory so bad.” Shoma glares, and Keiji sighs dramatically. “Remember that camp where we met? He talked about you so much that Fei once threw him out of our room?”

“…no?”

It only encourages Keiji. “Dude. He was so annoying, ‘why doesn’t Shoma talk to me’ and ‘what does Shoma like’ and I finally told him to try being quiet for a change and he was so. Quiet.” He grins. “Too bad it didn’t work, you’d still hide behind me and stare at him like a kid with a crush-”

“OKAY that is enough fiction thank you-”

“-and he got his wish when we walked in on him crying!” Keiji says, vindictively triumphant. “You ran up to him and tried to comfort him but you were like this tall-” He points at his knee, so Shoma kicks him there. “It was cute! You were this tiny chubby thing, so you couldn’t pat his head even on your toes so he had to scrunch down to help you reach, but he stopped crying, it was hilarious. I think he also stopped breathing.”

This… is too much new information for Shoma to handle. He slides down in his seat, determined to melt into it and disappear. Keiji looks at him disdainfully.

“Come on, where do you think your shameless sitting on my lap comes from.”

“But that’s you!”

“You did it with Yuzu too.”

“That is a lie.”

“Nope.”

Keiji claims he can prove it. Shoma is a masochist, because he dares Keiji to do it, and Keiji brandishes a photo reel from forever ago.

Shoma scrolls throughout the bus ride. Yuzu pinching Shoma’s cheeks. Yuzu lifting Shoma onto a chair. Yuzu dusting Shoma’s hair, fixing Shoma’s collar. Keiji seems a mere spectator in these photos, with Yuzu focused on Shoma and Shoma looking ahead, comfortable with the attention.

What changed?

There can only be one awful truth: Shoma is no longer worth the time. He had outgrown his usefulness when he outgrew his baby looks.

He lingers on a clip from a training camp, Yuzu already a late teen and himself looking barely older than five, the way he scrunches up his nose and laughs like a child as Yuzu languidly wiggles him by the back of the neck.

He doesn’t remember this.

He replays the clip over and over again, unable to tear his eyes away from Yuzu’s wistful eyes as he makes Shoma laugh like sunburst.

,

,

Sota: So I told Yuzu senpai Shoma and I are dating

Shoma: WHAT

Shoma: WHY

Sota: To test him, for your sake, duh

Shoma is home, but Yuzu is in the next show with Wakaba and Sota. Shoma is nervous for good reason. Apparently his friends are traitors who don’t agree.

Sota: He was cool with it! Even offered me love advice if I needed any.

Sota: So whatever issue he had with you, it wasn’t that

Satoko: Or maybe Javi or someone made him, you know, learn to deal with it.

Wakaba: Ooo so Shoma was a guinea pig?

Shoma: Thanks guys

He can’t understand it. The restlessness burns into him, blurring his steps, and Mihoko stops him and squints. “Shoma, did something happen during the tour?”

“…no?”

“Think harder.”

“Okay.”

He stares down at his blades. The beach, fevers. Sota and Satoko and Wakaba conspiring to make him a laughingstock into the next century. Keiji, Kanako, soju. Javi and fights. Cringey interviews. Stephane and Johnny and ice cream. Kindness. So much kindness.

And Yuzu.

Oh. Right. And Shoma got drunk and passed out.

“What does it mean,” he says hesitantly, “when someone helps you, but is also unkind?”

Her face clouds over. He reassures her that it’s not that bad.

“He means well, I think. I just… don’t understand why.”

She worries. Everyone does. He’d always been too small for his ambitions, always been among the youngest in the top tier, and the worry is a constant thing. He can’t soothe it except to get better, stronger.

She looks long at him. “Here’s the thing, Shoma: it doesn’t matter why.”

He blinks.

“He has his reasons, or maybe he doesn’t. But will the reasons make his actions any less unkind?”

“But,” he protests, “he’s not…I mean, he’s a good person inside.”

“Of course.” She smiles. “We may all have good intentions. But it’s our actions that matter.”

He looks down at his feet. He knows, and yet he doesn’t want to hear it.

“Be kind if you want.” She strokes his hair. “But you can’t change him. You can only decide for yourself: will you continue to carry on with him? Or will you decide to walk away?”

“I can’t do that,” he protests, and she squeezes his hands, fiercely.

“Yes you can. We all take too many years to realize our own power.”

He shakes his head. He doesn’t want this. He doesn’t want to need to walk away from Yuzu. “He might be going through a rough time, maybe.” His words sound lame to his own ears.

“Sure,” Mihoko agrees. “Life is hard. But if we let that be an excuse to treat each other badly, the world will always be a terrible place.”

He can’t refute that. But.

“What makes life more bearable is our kindness toward each other.” She pulls his shoulder to bump against hers, and he lets himself lean sideways into her as she rests her head on his. “We have the power to be a refuge, or be hell for other people.”

He doesn’t answer.

Life had never been hard for him. His family is well off. He has an opportunity to live only doing what he loves. Strangers love him for doing what he loves. His family takes care of him so he can focus on doing what he loves. It’s almost a selfish life, and it still leaves him a little breathless sometimes, how much people thank him for it, when he does nothing but take and take.

Kindness is in action. He knows this. But for some people, life is harder, and kindness takes strength. In a hard life, perhaps love takes courage. Dai’s revealing his boyfriend on Instagram. Mihoko smiling at him even though she is tired from the traveling for him. Many people have it harder, and he can’t fault them for struggling to be kind, when the world isn’t always kind to them. And if he’s got plenty to go around, why shouldn’t he share?

“Oh, Shoma.” She smiles, her eyes becoming those crescent moons that he loves so much. “Just promise me that you won’t break yourself trying to fix people that won’t give back.”

He nods, just to placate her, because how can people not respond to kindness?

“You don’t need a reason to be cruel,” she says, “just as you don’t need a reason to be kind.”

He stares down at their joined hands. His palms are bigger than hers. Her hands are leathery, shrunken. He blinks down in surprise. When had this started to happen? When had beautiful Coach Mihoko started to get wrinkly hands?

It’s all the years of kindness she has poured into him, he decides. Those years have aged her. He had aged her.

She looks into his eyes, needing him to understand, and he doesn’t, not really, but he does understand this: she wants him to understand because she wants him to be safe. Because she loves him.

He slowly curls his fingers around hers, and she smiles in answer. 

Protect your loved ones, Yuzu had said.

Shoma is stronger than Mihoko now. He has had enough dolls thrown at him that he now knows to reach up and pluck them midair before they hit her. He walks with confidence when moving with her at his side, arms outstretched over her head as the crowd screams, and only when he parts from her does he trip and fall on his face. So yes, he knows what it is to be strong for love. What it is to be bigger than oneself, to have courage one never knew one had, for the sake of another.

“I’ll try again from the top.”

She turns on the music. He circles the ice, places a hand on his heart.

He had always thought himself too weak to tell Yuzu that he was hurting him. But if he did, would that truly be courage? Would it make the world better for anyone?

Because at the end of the day, that is what the ice is all about: giving joy to himself and those around him. Being a sacred place where one opens up their heart and joins others in a quest for love, beauty, all the good things in life. If it has no space for Yuzu’s contempt, it has no space for Shoma’s resentment either.

Is there strength in learning to brush off Yuzu’s words and choosing to see kindness in his actions instead?

He leaps. There is really only one answer.

Maybe there will be light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe there won’t. He may never know Yuzu’s reasons. If he can be strong enough to keep his emotions in his own hands, he can be kind for the sake of being kind. Maybe he can stop giving when he’s stretched thin, and that doesn’t have to be the opposite of kindness either.

He’s not close to being stretched thin yet. He’s surrounded by love, and he is stronger for it. He goes through the steps, pictures a princess with silky black hair and impassive eyes.

He doesn’t know why she is cruel, but perhaps if he gets stronger, the reasons won’t matter. He can have love enough for the both of them regardless of her reasons. He can choose to walk away, but he chooses to stay, because love makes him strong enough to reach beyond the thorns of her locked palace and offer her a gentleness she deems as weakness. Maybe her cruelty doesn’t have a reason, but his love doesn’t need a reason either. Maybe she has reasons and she’s hurting, and that can be his reasons too.

He will go on dancing, because there has to be goodness beyond that locked gate. There has to be.

He ends with a longing pose, reaching, and distantly hears Mihoko shrieking. He blinks out of his reverie, searches for her with his eyes, and bursts with joy.

He knows nothing of this sort of love, but maybe love is all the things that he already knows. Perhaps it’s in the small strings that connect people to each other, in Stephane’s teaching him steps and Nobu bringing him food and Mihoko holding his hands.

He still has no answers, but he feels steadier for Mihoko’s words, firmly grounded in his faith in her love. He steps off of the ice, feeling as if he has both feet through the door of adulthood at last.

He’s ready for Seniors.

,

,

**To Be Continued**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things have been rough. I really appreciate the thoughtful comments y'all have left - I've been reading and rereading them pretty much every day to get me through the days. 
> 
> This is a super long story, so it's a very slow burn. Buckle down. 
> 
> (I live for comments!)


	6. Grand Prix

**Chapter 6: Grand Prix**

 

“You,” Keiji pants, “are some kind of monster.”

“Don’t… talk to me,” Shoma pants back. He collapses against the wall.

Keiji sits beside him. “Dude, don’t… collapse here.”

“No cameras.” Shoma flaps his hand. “Good enough.” He flops onto his back. “Oh my god, long programs… are torture.”

“Dude… you did this at Nationals and… beat us already.”

“Yeah and I… thought I was gonna die there too.” He painfully sits up and Keiji places a hand on his knee, just for comfort. “I don’t… know how you do this all the time.”

“I don’t have pubescent lungs.” He dodges Shoma’s weak swipe. “But seriously, first rodeo in Seniors, and 1st place in the free. You monster.”

“9th place in the short, though.” Shoma wipes the sweat off his nose. “I won’t even medal.”

“Yeah,” Keiji says. “So why do you look you so damn chipper.” He pulls on a cheek, and Shoma realizes that he’d been smiling. He runs with it.

“Because my pubescent lungs are waiting to replace you in your old age.”

“Respect your elders, child,” Keiji says, earning a swift kick to the shin.

Keiji continues to grumble about Shoma’s rise from 9th place in the short program to winning the long program, and Shoma eyes him disdainfully because medalists should not complain.

“But what happened in the short? It wasn’t like you at all.”

Shoma wrinkles his nose. “First rodeo in Seniors. Nerves.”

“And the free?”

“YOLO,” he says wisely, and dodgest Keiji’s hair ruffling.

Shoma’s not happy about his short, not at all, but is satisfied that he became angry about it enough to go out there and attack as if his life depended on it. Pushing himself to the point of collapsing backstage seems to be the only way for him to compete in the Senior level, and well, if that’s what it takes he’ll do it.

He redeemed himself in the long and learned something about himself in the process, got to compete in the same arena as Keiji and got to sit on his lap, and Keiji got himself a silver medal. Shoma decides to consider US Classic a win.

“You beat Javi!” Sota screams into the phone after Japan Open. “You beat Patrick!”

“Well, just this one time-”

“Ohmygaaaad!”

Shoma detaches his ear from the phone. “Stop it, you’ll jinx it.”

He doesn’t.

Shoma wins the free in Skate America, and the Trophee Eric Bombard. Wakaba sends him undecipherable emojis. He bites down a smile, tells them to pipe down. The real match is still not yet begun. He promises Sota that he’d buy him snacks again if he makes it to the Junior Grand Prix Final, and Sota makes it to Barcelona probably because of that, the pig.

When they meet, Sota wraps his arms around his neck and pulls him so tight that Shoma starts to see stars. “Sota,” he chokes. “Sota, what.”

“Shh,” Sota whispers. “Relax, my darling.”

The hotel lobby is full of reporters, but no one notices them because Yuzu walks in after Sota, and his eyes lock on Shoma like a dark star. Shoma blinks, and Sota lets him go only to pull him into an elevator. Yuzu and Shoma’s eyes remain locked as the elevator door closes.

Then Sota abandons him as soon as they’re in the hotel room, because Sota is a pig.

“Why…am I going out in the middle of the night in a foreign country just to buy you snacks?”

“Because you promised?”

“Why alone, though?”

“Because I’m in the middle of a boss fight!”

Well, Shoma can’t refute that. Games are important.

He steps outside the hotel, relieved that the reporters have cleared. The air is chillier than he had anticipated, so he shoves his hands into his pockets. They’re empty.

Oh. He’d taken Sota’s jacket.

He turns around and promptly bumps into Yuzu’s chest.

“Hey.”

He’s huffing softly, as if he had been running. In his indoor clothes. Shoma bobs his head in a hurry.

Yuzu smiles. “Long time no see.”

Did Yuzu just smile at him? Shoma glances around for cameras.

“Where are you going?” Yuzu’s question sounds curious, not accusatory, and Shoma wonders if being in Spain has done something to his brain. He glances down at his jacket.

“I’m, uh, going back to get my jacket. It’s got my wallet in it.” He looks up at Yuzu, who stands looking at him, waiting, and oh. He blushes. “I was going out to buy snacks for Sota.”

Oh. Wait. He shouldn’t have….

Whatever. If Yuzu’s going to be homophobic about it, that’s not his problem, is it? He looks up at Yuzu, almost daring him to start throwing out negative GOEs.

Instead, Yuzu places a hand on his arm. “Do you know where the convenience store is?”

“…no?”

Yuzu leaks out a chuckle. Jerk.

“Let’s go, then.”

“But I-”

“I have money.”

Well. Okay then.

Declining his senpai too many times would be rude. Shoma totters along to match Yuzu’s stride, and Yuzu notices, and slows down. Shoma determinedly widens his stride regardless.

“How was your summer?”

So they’re doing small talk now?

“It was fine.”

“Did anything fun?”

“Just,” Shoma thinks about it. “Stayed home and played games. Watched anime. Listened to music.”

And this is why he hates small talk. He has nothing interesting to talk about, and when he shares his boring life, he is painfully reminded of that fact. It’s a good thing that he’s not interested in romance like his friends are, because he would be the first to be dumped in group blind dates. “Oh, and my brother had knee surgery, so I stayed in the hospital.”

“Your brother?” Yuzu blinks. “Itsuki? He still plays hockey?”

Shoma nods. He doesn’t remember telling him about this, but Yuzu probably has super good memory, so.

“That sucks,” Yuzu hums. “It’s sweet that you stayed with him though. You two seem really close.”

Shoma doesn’t know how to answer.

Yuzu doesn’t seem at all fazed by his silence, because he talks enough for three people. “What kind of anime do you watch? Which games?” Apparently he’s one of those rare people that are secretly just as boring as himself, because he sounds genuinely interested.

Right. Yuzu is so busy training that he also has no social life.

He hums and nods when Shoma hesitantly answers, and makes a note of them in his phone. “Sounds fun,” he says. “I’ll try them too.”

This conversation is getting too weird for Shoma. The worst part of it is that it feels so easy and comfortable that he almost believes that this is genuine. Forgets that Yuzu knows how to make things easy and comfortable for everyone; he just hadn’t been doing it for Shoma.

He takes a moment to gather himself while Yuzu grabs a random passer-by on the street and asks in broken English for directions. It’s a wildly awe-inspiring thing, watching Yuzu, in his all-Japanese glory, being so unashamed of spewing what Shoma is sure is pretty horrendous English. He looks perfectly at home in a foreign land, among people that think and behave so differently from their own.

Shoma stiffens as the pedestrian scans him up and down, and Yuzu’s body shifts to cover his.

When they arrive at a store, Shoma realizes that if he had tried to do this alone, or even with Sota, he would never have made it back to the hotel. He dives into the aisles as Yuzu picks out a disgusting green drink.

Yuzu blinks when Shoma reappears with a bag of cookies. “Just one?”

“It’s fine.”

“Get more.” Yuzu pushes him back into the aisles. “We’ll be playing another drinking game. Stock up.”

Well then.

Shoma reemerges balancing a mountain of snacks in his arms, and Yuzu turns away with a hint of a smile and takes out his wallet.

They carry a bag each, the silence between them more content. A car screeches dangerously close, and Yuzu’s arm shoots out across Shoma’s chest, and Shoma tumbles into it. They both huff a little, a surprised chuckle, and the air between them feels warmer.

The street is quiet, the street lamps warm and bright.

“Did you get home safe?” Yuzu says. “After the tour.”

Shoma nods. “Keiji took me to the station.”

Yuzu hums.

“Oh, and I’m sorry for.” Shoma cringes, trying to hold down the blush. Yuzu laughs a little.

“It’s no problem. You drank for me after all.”

Oh god, he did. He dark-knighted for the great Yuzu senpai. Shoma is glad that Satoko kept that piece of gossip out of her photo reel.

“I must have been heavy,” he says, wishing he could crawl into a hole somewhere.

“You were pretty light.”

“But you said I was fat.”

“What?” Yuzu looks at him strangely. “I did?”

“Uh.” Shoma is done with this conversation. He shouldn’t have even started it. “It’s fine. I gain weight pretty fast.”

“You’re just short. You’re not fat.” Yuzu sounds almost amused, and this is… becoming entirely too weird for Shoma. He latches onto another topic that comes to mind.

“What were you waiting for?”

“Huh?”

“Your text. You said you’d wait.”

Yuzu slows. This… apparently was exactly the wrong topic to diverge into. Shoma slows to a stop, gut twisting with dread. They’re standing in a shadow between lamp posts, and Yuzu’s eyes glint in the darkness.

“How much do you remember?”

This is as good a sign as any that he should panic. So Shoma panics.

“I… drank with the love thing from Satton? Then… I woke up in bed.”

“You remember nothing in between?”

He is so screwed.

“I’m sorry,” he says, sounding as faint as he feels. “Did I do something inappropriate?”

Yuzu looks away and resumes walking. Shoma shuffles along. “Nah,” Yuzu says cheerfully at a lamppost. “You fell asleep right away.”

Shoma breathes out a sigh of relief as they near his room, Yuzu walking him all the way to the door. He turns to bow. “Thank you, senpai.”

Yuzu holds out his bag of snacks. Shoma backs away. “Sota might not leave those intact.”

“Then we’ll buy more.” Yuzu shrugs. He leaves Shoma balancing snacks precariously in his arms and does a little finger wave before turning away.

“Why are you knocking like a weirdo?” Sota opens the door. “Oh my god Shoma, you forgot your wallet like an airhead and came back with a haul! Who’s your fairy godmother?”

“Shut up, it’s for a party.”

“What party?”

Shoma has no idea. He dumps the snacks in Sota’s arms.

,

,

“Give me a good luck kiss!”

“Why can’t you be satisfied with a high five like the girls?”

Sota sticks out his face. “Because you love me more.”

“No.”

“Shoma,” Sota whines. “I’ll fail if you jinx it.”

“No you won’t.”

“I’m gonna fall and break a leg and I’ll never recover and I’ll retire at the ripe old age of eighteen-”

“Oh my god fine.” Shoma pecks Sota on the cheek, and Sota raises his fists like some conquistador, and Shoma determinedly ignores the screaming from Mai and Marin. “Good luck!” he shouts as Sota skates out.

Shoma scoots to peer above a particularly spiky head. He bumps into Yuzu’s bony shoulder.

Yuzu’s eyes are locked on Sota. “His condition’s off.” His voice is chill. “Maybe you should have kissed him harder.”

Shoma promises himself that he’d kill Sota if he doesn’t medal.

Sota does well. He comes back panting, a little embarrassed, a little pleased, and full of laughter and hugs. “I’ll cheer for you!” he says, and Shoma blinks at the sudden gulf between them. He is in Seniors now. He and Sota aren’t going to be on a podium together this year, and with the injuries that are rife in this field, who knows when. He grabs Sota’s hand, and Sota hugs him again just for good measure, laughing comforts into his ear.

Yuzu is leaning on a sofa at the hotel lobby when Shoma returns to the hotel that evening. “Focus,” he snaps, and Shoma flinches to a standstill.

“…what?” He forgets to bow.

“Keep your flirting out of the court.” Yuzu straightens. “This is Seniors. We don’t have time for your play dates. No one can win a medal for you, not even your boyfriend.”

Watching Yuzu walk away, Shoma flushes hot and cold. He should have known better than to hope. He doesn’t even know what he was hoping for. It was stupid of him.

When Sota catches up with him, he determinedly holds Sota’s hand all the way to their room. Sota doesn’t question it. He lets Shoma throw himself into bed and bury his head in the pillow, and wordlessly starts up a game so Shoma can join when he beats another level.

,

,

**To Be Continued**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait. Between crunching in the job and dealing with relationship issues, things have been hectic. Hope you enjoyed the new chapter! 
> 
> (I love feedback. <3)


	7. Barcelona

**Chapter 7: Barcelona**

**,**

**,**

 

Sota medals, as promised, at the Junior Grand Prix Final.

“Barely,” he whines, and Shoma swats his arm.

“Don’t complain.”

“As if you wouldn’t!”

“Yeah, but not out loud.”

“You’re such a devil inside, people should see this part of you. Stop swatting me.”

Shoma swats him again just for good measure. Sota goes in for a kiss instead, and that immediately puts a stop to Shoma’s aggression. He flees as Sota chases him with a cackle and bumps into the younger Daisuke in the lobby.

“Hey, it’s the medalist!” He says brightly. He turns to beckon to Yuzu, who’s walking slowly out of the elevator. “We should celebrate!”

“Not tonight.” Yuzu’s face is hard. “Still have the free skate left.”

“Man, okay. Oh! How about a party?” Daisuke brightens again. “We should do like, a drinking party. Wait. That would be weird. Our Juniors. Hmm.”

Yuzu looks away. “Sure.”

Shoma stands blinking after they pass.

“Whatcha thinking?” Sota elbows him. “Excited to get drunk?”

Shoma frowns. “Sota, what happened to all our chips?”

“I finished them, duh. You were there.”

Shoma decides not to think about it. “I’ll go buy more.”

It turns out to be a bad idea.

He is ambushed when he comes out the back door of the hotel. They speak Japanese, but his joy in seeing them dissipates into confusion as he begins to listen to their words.

“How do you feel about yourself, knowing that you’re a cheater?” one of them says.

Shoma blinks.

“Your jumps suck!” shouts a man. “They’re underrotated!”

“Cheater!” spits another woman.

“You’re ridiculously overscored!” shouts a girl. “You should be ashamed of yourself!”

“I,” Shoma tries. “Sorry?”

“I hope you fail!” shouts a young woman. “Yuzu deserves better!”

“Who did you bribe?”

“Drop out, loser!”

“Stay out of Yuzu’s way!”

“Die!”

Shoma flinches.

It’s too much, the sheer number of people and their many voices. They’re crowding against him, and he’s unprotected by the walls of the ice rink. He needs to get some safe distance, preferably in the quiet of his room, get his bearings. Process what they’re saying. But he’s stuck and the mob won’t let him move.

“Please,” he says, “I need to-”

“Cheater!”

“Please,” he begs.

“Yuzu!” screams a woman.

“Yuzu!”

Then people are stampeding around him. Shoma gets swept against the crowd and manages to cling to a wall as they mob Yuzu, who is speaking and smiling like a benevolent lord. Shoma tries to sneak back in, but Yuzu is in front of the door. Why is he out here anyway? Yuzu hates being mobbed unawares.

Not one to waste a chance, Shoma begins to sneak behind Yuzu, who steadfastly ignores him.

“We believe in you, Yuzu!” A woman shouts. “We know you don’t deserve to be compared to the likes of Uno!”

“Don’t mind the cheaters!” shouts a man.

Yuzu’s face is porcelain smooth. He turns, pins Shoma with his gaze, and beckons.

Shoma stands frozen.

Yuzu reaches, wraps his fingers around Shoma’s shoulder, and pulls him all the way in until he’s glued to Yuzu’s side. “Have you met our Shoma?” His eyes turn into happy crescents. “I’ve known him since he was like, a baby! It was amazing, because he was so good for his age. I quaked in my boots.” He laughs.

Shoma is shaking. Yuzu’s arm tightens around his back like a hot iron rod.

“What’s even more amazing,” he goes on, “is how humbly he works for someone with so much talent. He’s the hardest worker I know, and I know a lot. He makes me better.” He turns his head, smiles down at him. “Welcome to Seniors, Shoma. I’m so happy to have you by my side again.”

Shoma fights the ringing in his ears. All he can process is the heat of his touch, the brightness of his eyes. The crowd is a dull roar.

Apparently Yuzu’s words have a lot of power, no matter how fake. His fans part like a river at his request, and Shoma is safetly escorted back inside where Yuzu dumps him at the lobby and disappears.

“Are you okay?” Sota asks when he sees him in bed, screaming into his pillow. “Okay, obviously not. How are you feeling?”

“I don’t know,” Shoma says at the pillow. He waves Sota away. “Too many things.”

So he takes it out on the ice the next day, and vaults his way up to the podium.

“Do you lag on the short on purpose?” Sota says incredulously. “So you can show off launching up to the top in the free like an angry little rocket?”

“It’s just…a personal best,” Shoma pants. He feels like he’s going to die.

Sota puts an arm around him as if to hug, and deftly maneuvers him away from the cameras. “Can you breathe?” he whispers. “I haven’t seen you so winded in a long time.”

“I,” Shoma gasps. “I’m fine.”

He’s not. Senior’s is tough. His program is longer. He had to jump higher. Turandot is a monster. He hates green. Why is his costume green.

“You’re good. You’re great. You’re amazing.” Sota pats his back, shielding him in a corner backstage. “You’re gonna medal. You’re gonna surge up there and win a spot on the podium on your first Senior Grand Prix Final.”

Shoma wordlessly flaps his hand at him, waving him away. He can’t hear from the ringing in his ears. Everything’s going white.

Someone is forcing his jaw open. Shoma pulls away, but a large hand cradles the back of his head, and before he can protest, a cool mist hits his throat. He breathes. Then the mist comes back, flooding his body with calm.

Something warm is wrapped around his face. The world slowly opens again, and his hearing returns to a narrowed focus of a heart beating against his own.

“One,” Yuzu’s voice murmurs against his temple, “two.”

He repeats slowly, one and two and one and two, and Shoma realizes he is buried in his chest. He’s buckled on the floor.

Then something shifts, and then he’s in Coach Mihoko’s familiar arms, and he’s home. Except it’s different, because… he’s broader than her.

He burrows into her embrace. He doesn’t want this. He doesn’t want to outgrow home, watch the tides change. She strokes his hair.

“Breathe, Shoma.”

He obeys.

When he at last detaches from her, steady as the rock he is known to be, Yuzu is nowhere to be seen. He looks around and Sota points at the screen. Yuzu is skating.

,

,

The crowd is way too big and there are way too many camera flashes. Shoma fidgets as Yuzu smiles at Javi, wishing he could get off the podium already. He’s used to standing tall at the center of the Junior podium, but sharing the podium with Yuzu and Javi? Olympic and World Champions? No. This is not real. He’s more tired than he is proud; he wants the camera flashes out of his eyes.

Yuzu turns to him, points at his arm. Shoma blinks.

Yuzu repeats himself. Flaps at his arm, points, talks some more. He wants Shoma to hold his arm? Shoma obeys. Yuzu laughs and doubles over, so Shoma imitates and bows. Yuzu laughs even harder.

Turns out Yuzu is a terrible teacher, and Shoma is now going to be teased to the end of eternity for hooking arms with Yuzu in a wedding pose. Well, they had flowers to match, so that works? They had flowers, right? He doesn’t remember.

“No, no, that’s a wedding pose! Put your arm around my back,” Yuzu laughs, “my back, oh my god, Shoma, my back.”

It’s nice, seeing him laugh. He looks so happy. Shoma wishes that he could see this without the help of a gold medal around Yuzu’s neck.

Yuzu’s good mood continues into gala practice. He laughs and twirls with Javi and practically everyone else there that he does and doesn’t know, and he even comes to be friendly with Shoma. Which is a given, considering there are cameras around. Shoma hates himself for soaking it in, knowing that it’s fake.

“Shoma, wave,” Yuzu coos.

Shoma blinks at the audience. Yuzu grabs his arms and waves for him.

It’s one thing to struggle through choreo steps with a room full of laughing teammates. It’s another to stand around not understanding the language, waiting and wondering, while people look on and take pictures and judge. There are too many instructions and few, too many people and too few, and he doesn’t know what to do. So he stands still, chewing on his lips with full abandon, and Yuzu is the only one who shows up continuously to distract him from the confusion.

Why does he do this and make Shoma so helpless, torn between gratitude and anger? Did that cancel out the prickly words he threw at Shoma? Shoma hates being confused, and it’s exhausting.

He resigns himself to seeing the silver lining: at least he can have kind Yuzu for a while, and isn’t that what matters? He focuses on the hell that is choreo steps, because he ended up winning a medal and now has to perform at a gala, which he absolutely did not prepare for.

The banquet is a lot more enjoyable, because it has food and he’s not required to get out of his seat in an attempt to mingle. So he plasters himself to his seat, secretly admiring Yuzu’s lean muscles as he joins Javi in a dance-off, and hides behind Sota when Javi comes to round up more victims. Sota wiggles his eyebrows but gives up trying to push him when Shoma quietly threatens to suplex him to the floor.

Then suddenly Yuzu appears, exuding laughter and heat, and pulls Shoma up by his hand.

“Shoma!” He throws an arm around Shoma. “Pictures!”

Sure. Fanservice. It’s fine. Shoma forces a smile as Daisuke takes a picture of them. “Sota too!” Yuzu sings, and when Shoma tries to leave his grip to take the picture for them, he grabs Shoma’s arm and holds him still. “Daisuke, another one,” he calls out, and Shoma is stuck posing for more pictures as people come and go to be included in a picture with the great Hanyu.

An eternity later, Yuzu ruffles Sota’s hair and wanders off to be carried by some Chinese skater princess-style, and Mao comes rounding up the team for a drinking party.

“Can we drink?” Sota bounces as they head to the room being shared by Daisuke and Yuzu. “Come on, please? Please?”

“You’re a minor,” Mao says. “Well, Shoma can, because he’s a Senior.”

“That’s not fair,” Marin cries. “Shoma is only seventeen!”

“But he’s with the MEN,” Mao grins. “Unlike the BOYS and GIRLS.”

Satoko snickers.

Yuzu mutters something about being roped into this again, but agrees to be punished with gross cookies and sits opposite of Shoma. There is no folding table in a hotel room in Barcelona, so they push the beds apart and sit on the carpeted floor in a circle, and Mao takes out soju bottles to Yuzu’s knowing amusement. Sota has the audacity to not look guilty at all at the sight of cookies bought by Daisuke last minute. Yuzu doesn’t even ask.

Instead of a plushie, they get out Yuzu’s medal (“Why mine?” he complains, but when Shoma offers to go get his medal, he takes his out.), and Mao starts the game.

“If you have ever had a crush on a fellow skater!”

Shoma blushes as hands fly to the medal. Of couse the girls go for it – they probably have a crush on either Yuzu or Keiji or Daisuke or Dai or –

“Seriously, grandpa?” Sota pokes him. Yuzu is holding his medal, and everyone is watching Shoma. “Never?”

“I’m only seventeen?” Shoma doesn’t understand how he’s the only one.

“Boring,” Sota complains.

The game is a lot tamer this time, probably because the older ones are keeping it under control for the sake of the children (ha), and the younger ones aren’t sure how far they’re allowed to overstep. Shoma spaces out on most of the questions because they don’t apply to him (why is everyone so fixated on romance?) and struggles to come up with what to say. Mao and Daisuke laugh the loudest, and Satoko has an almost evil glint in her eye as she lunges for the medal, and it’s starting to scare Shoma a bit.

Soon they run out of cookies for the young uns, and Marin’s eyes turn huge and sad.

“I’ll go get some.” Shoma rises.

“Will you be okay alone?” Mao frowns.

Yuzu rises. “I’ll go with him.”

God dammit.

Shoma doesn’t have his jacket, so he wears Daisuke’s jacket and sets off trailing after Yuzu. Together they step out onto the winter night of Barcelona.

“Feeling drunk yet?”

Shoma yawns. “I’m okay.”

Yuzu hums. “Will you remember this in the morning?”

Shoma grows red.

Yuzu smiles at him. “That jacket looks too big for you.”

Shoma looks down at his sweater paws. “It’s okay.”

“Here.” Yuzu takes off his jacket. “Mine isn’t quite as big, it will fit you better.”

Shoma doesn’t want to protest, so he takes off his jacket and hands it to Yuzu. Yuzu’s jacket still has ridiculously long sleeves, but at least the body is slimmer. He wraps himself up in it and continues walking, trusting Yuzu to know where he’s going.

“Congratulations,” he says awkwardly.

“You too.” Yuzu smiles. “Great start to Seniors.”

Shoma ducks his head. They walk on in silence.

“Hey.”

Shoma looks up.

“Why didn’t you tell me you had asthma?”

Shoma looks down. Because you didn’t ask, duh, he wants to say, but. “It was a long time ago.”

Like Yuzu being kind to him. Helping him, carrying things for him, talking to him, just like… what he’s been doing, actually.

Shoma feels off kilter. Has he been angsting all these months because Yuzu had simply smiled less at him? Was that the only difference?

He needs time to sort this out.

Yuzu looks down. “I didn’t know,” he says quietly. “I knew you since you were so small, and I never knew.”

Shoma doesn’t know what to say. “It’s okay,” he settles. “Not many people know.”

“Do you remember when we first met?”

Shoma shakes his head.

Yuzu smiles a little, as if to himself. “Of course. You were so young.” He looks up and sighs. “I always knew you would come up through the ranks and threaten me, though.”

Oh.

Ohhh.

It’s as if someone had turned the lights on.

Yuzu had been acting strange because Shoma was starting to threaten him. He was torn between the memories of helpless little Shoma, and this rising threat that was nipping at his heels. That’s why he was acting in a confusing way; because Yuzu himself was confused.

Yuzu cleaves his heart open on the ice for all the world to see, and it’s a delicate thing. And if his macho act in everyday life is a performance and his beauty on the ice is his more honest self, maybe he shies away from group dinners because the constant masquerading gets to be exhausting. Maybe he treated Shoma kindly in the past because he was non-threatening, and didn’t require him to puff up his feathers and play the alpha male.

Shoma feels something like compassion for him.

“I could never catch up to you,” he says, as comfortingly as he can. “It’s impossible. It could never happen.”

Yuzu looks at him strangely. “Don’t bet on it.”

“It’s true. I don’t want that. I … I want to be good. But I don’t want to be the kind of godlike presence that you are.”

Shoma knows that Yuzu won’t understand this. Yuzu is hung up on winning like a crazy person. Shoma hates losing, sure, but he cares more about how much he improves with each performance, how well he managed to fulfill his goals. But such self-created satisfaction doesn’t seem to exist for Yuzu. Even if he does his very best, he is dissatisfied if someone manages to beat him. He has to be better than other people; his joys and his sorrows all hinge on other people, and for a flash of a minute, Shoma pities him.

“If you don’t want to win that badly,” Yuzu says oddly, “what do you want?”

Distracted by his own realization, Shoma doesn’t think. “I just want you to like me. Like back then.”

Yuzu doesn’t answer, and Shoma grows red in his ears. Maybe he’s had too much to drink.

After they buy an armful of foodstuffs – Yuzu insists on paying again – they head back out into the darkness, and Yuzu slows to a stop as they near the hotel.

“Shoma,” he says, and braces himself, like a man ready to go diving into a swarm of stalkers. “You need to become stronger.”

Shoma blinks. “Okay.”

Yuzu turns to him, and his eyes are dark, his face hard. “Stop moving out of people’s way during warmups. Do your jumps. Don’t tell your competitor that you don’t plan on threatening their crown. Don’t kiss people because they demand it. Don’t let people kiss you as a joke. Stop doing,” he waves, voice rising, “this!”

Shoma recoils. What is going on?

Yuzu breathes hard, closes his eyes. When he opens them and looks at Shoma, he’s once again porcelain blank. “Your axel is still off axis,” he says. “Triple axels should be the most basic of all jumps. Your quads are shaky. You land terribly, and you keep that up, and your knees will be torn to pieces by the time you reach twenty. Is that what you want? A brief spark in the sun in your teens, and fade into nothing right after? For no one to remember you?”

Shoma takes a step back.

“You want to be friends with me?” Yuzu continues the horrible tirade, and Shoma wishes he could plug his ears. “Then come up to my level. Dare to aspire to beat me. I don’t hang out with losers who are satisfied with mediocrity.”

Then he watches Shoma, as if he actually expects Shoma to answer such nonsense. So Shoma bows. “Yes, senpai.”

He can’t connect the punched-out sound Yuzu makes to a facial expression. “I’m sorry,” he tries.

Yuzu turns away at last. They enter the hotel, quiet and distant from each other, and return to the glee of everyone who pounces on crackers, and the game continues for a while more as Shoma spaces out and Yuzu stares down at the table. Mao announces them sufficiently drunk and tired, and they break up for the night.

“Shoma, what’s going on?” Sota sits on the bed, and watches Shoma lie down and stare up at the ceiling. “Did something happen between you and Yuzu senpai out there?”

Shoma swallows. There’s a lump on his throat, but he doesn’t know why. He closes his eyes. “I don’t know,” he rasps. “I don’t know what happened, Sota.”

He hides under the blanket. Sota doesn’t push. He’s thoughtful like that, young as he is.

Barcelona feels so foreign and cold, and Shoma wishes desperately that he were home.

,

,

**To Be Continued**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait. Been dealing with life stuff. Like working around the clock without sleep or food, or losing a job, all that. 
> 
> It's a short chapter, I know, but I wanted to have something out there before I disappear for another month or three. 
> 
> Thank you everyone who leaves me feedback. I adore them and read them over and over again.


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